Scarpetta

Last year we went down to Scarpetta to celebrate A's birthday. We were excited to try the pasta there, but did face one challenge with choosing dishes. We gave up red meat for Lent so we had more factors to consider than we usually do!

The meal started with the famous bread basket, which had 4 types of bread - Italian loaf, stromboli, focaccia and regular rolls.

Our favorite was the stromboli, which was bread with some meat, cheese and vegetables baked into it. We got another bread basket just to get more stromboli. Not sure what type of meat was in the stromboli, and M didn't even notice it while eating it. A thought it might have been pork salami or pancetta, so we just assumed this didn't mess up our Lenten fast.

The bread basket was accompanied by three sides - mascarpone butter, tomato and eggplant spread, and citrus olive oil. Our favorite was definitely the tomato and eggplant spread. We could eat jars of that. The citrus olive oil was a good break from the usual olive oil that comes with bread.

We decided to get two appetizers to share. One was the famous creamy polenta appetizer, which came topped with a fricassee of truffled mushrooms. This was creamy and delicious, but still felt light. The mushrooms added a great earthy flavor.

For our second appetizer, we went with the crispy fritto misto, a mix of lightly fried seafood, vegetables (eggplant, artichokes, zucchini), herbs and lemon. Even though it was all fried food, it wasn't heavy and the herbs gave it so much flavor.

We each ordered a pasta, which was where the avoidance of meat was most noticeable in winnowing down our options. A went with the roasted beet casonsei, which came with smoked ricotta, pistachios and poppy seeds (and was reminiscent of the casonzei we had at Babbo a few years ago).  The subtle sweetness and earthiness of the beets paired nicely with the more pungent smoked ricotta. Much like at Babbo, the pairing tasted faintly of bacon due to the smokiness. It was heavier than the other dishes we had because of the creamy sauce, but it was quite tasty.

M got the black farfalle with lobster and basil bread crumbs. This was our favorite of the two pastas and probably our favorite dish of the night. The farfalle itself was perfectly cooked and so good. There was also a generous amount of lobster mixed in, which made it worth the price. (We didn't get the $24 spaghetti with tomato and basil, even though people rave about it, since it just seemed too pricey for what it was.)

We also split an entree, which we probably didn't need to get, but we didn't know we would be so full after the pasta dishes. We got the fennel dusted black cod, with concentrated tomatoes, mantecato and black olive oil. This was pretty good, a soft piece of fish along with root vegetables, but the pasta was definitely better.

We decided, since we were so full, that we would just split one dessert. But when the dessert course came out, there was a plate of petit fours (not sure if everyone got this or if it was a special birthday treat) for A's birthday. There was chocolate cake with dried cherry, marshmallow, date fudge, chocolate covered orange, and raspberry jelly.

The dessert we ordered was the meyer lemon catalana, which came with a creamy cake, red beet confit, angel food cake, grapefruit, candied fennel, lemon creme, and some foam. We really enjoyed this, especially the beets. Taking a small piece of each element of the dessert together made for a wonderful bite.

We really enjoyed our meal at Scarpetta. It's no surprise why it's been successful over the years and expanded into a mini-empire. We hadn't tried it in other cities before because we figured we could just try it at home. We would definitely return for more pasta!