$$$$Price: Expensive • Italian • Newport Beach
Excellent food, as always - we travel to Italy twice a year (mainly for the food ;-), and as on our first visit, this was up there on par with excellent food in Italy. The Arancini were perfect - I thought they were slightly too large to be perfect, but they were perfect... Rucola e carciofi salad wonderful and very Italian. Mom loved her risotto al mare (I don't think any seafood here can begin to compete with Italian, but that's more a source problem - her risotto & scampi were cooked perfectly al dente and creamy, I wasn't as enamored of the mussels - they just aren't the same here - no one's fault). My teeny assistant ate her entire bowl of cacao e pepé and three pieces of garlic bread, so that says it all. My gnocchi al gamberi was absolutely perfection. The shrimp were fine, but the gnocchi in pink sauce sublime. No room for dessert but mom took home the Nutella Bread pudding and said it was perfect. Service was generally good, the owner went out of his way to make sure we were comfortable, but there was a large party in the next room and they were spread a bit thin. And they were very sweet to let me speak my fractured Italian to them the whole time.
