![\"Italian](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/2540-Patio.jpg\" "\\"2540")
<\/a>You\u2019re more likely to find the new 25Forty Bistro & Bakehouse on foot than by car, since this unassuming place doesn\u2019t shout out its presence with big signs and banners. A find it unquestionably is, since 25Forty \u2013 the name is taken from its address on Congress Street \u2013 offers perhaps the most authentic, most expertly prepared Italian fare in this high-profile corner of San Diego. Chef\/proprietor Mark Pelliccia, a man who has labored much to become a master of his craft, but not at all to promote himself, turns out lovely dishes in a comfortable setting staffed by young Italian women who serve with smiles and confidence. <\/p>\n
In 1985, the Pelliccia family \u2013 Mark was then 10 \u2013 moved to San Diego from New York, and Luigi Pelliccia opened the long-popular Luigi\u2019s near Belmont Park in Mission Beach. Mark, whose cooking you may well have savored during the first couple of years of Solare, the stylish Italian in Liberty Station, decided to go into the family trade via formal training. In 1993, he enrolled in a six-year program at a government-operated cooking and hotel management school in Turin, Italy, which he followed with a one-year stint at the L\u2019Etoile pastry school in Chioggia, near Venice. He then commenced working and \u201cgetting experience,\u201d as he says, in Italy, spending four years in Elba, Turin, Venice and Sertriere, before working another four years as chef of the prestigious casino in San Remo. <\/p>\n
Pelliccia opened 25Forty in February and says the place is doing well.<\/p>\n It should be. Fifteen years\u2019 experience in Italy makes the 35-year-old a formidable expert at cooking Italian food the real way, which can be vastly different from the kind of fare typically offered in San Diego. Fortunately, there are plenty of patrons ready and willing to taste dishes like the magnificent agnolotti (tiny round ravioli in a sumptuous, gravy-like sauce) he prepared at Solare, and promises to offer soon at 25Forty. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re here doing everything fresh and made from scratch,\u201d says the roughly bearded chef. \u201cNothing is frozen, and I buy all local produce. I\u2019m trying my hardest to put out the best quality food.\u201d<\/p>\n The effort shows consistently. The relatively brief menus are expanded at every meal by numerous specials, just as in Italy, where the market frequently determines the menu. At one recent dinner, the blackboard listed virtually impossible-to-find-elsewhere offerings like breaded zucchini flan with arugula, and beef tonnato, a variant on the vitello tonnato that so engaged foodies during the American culinary explosion of the 1970s. Designed as a warm-weather appetizer, the dish calls for thin slices of poached or gently roasted veal or beef (a beef eye-round roast, which Pelliccia uses, gives solid slices without fat) to be doused with a creamy mayonnaise. The distinguishing factors are the canned tuna beaten into the sauce (you might not guess this ingredient, because the flavor is mild), and the piquant capers that bring bite to the presentation.<\/p>\n Specials are priced on a daily basis, but generally speaking, pastas are $13 at night (and usually a dollar less at lunch), while entrees cost $16. An unusual menu category called \u201csnacks\u201d offers delightful $3 plates of assorted olives, raw vegetables with tart, Greek tzatziki sauce, and pissaladiere, a pizza-like French-Italian specialty that Pelliccia may well have encountered when he worked in San Remo. In his version, a light, crisp but relatively thick crust is decorated with tomatoes and sharp seasonings, but (gratefully) avoids the anchovies that usually lattice the crust in Nice, where it supposedly was born. It makes a nice shared prelude to the beef tonnato, or perhaps to the day\u2019s soup ($4), which may be a stylish mushroom pur\u00e9e enriched at serving time with saut\u00e9ed quartered mushrooms that Pelliccia pours sizzling into the bowls of soup just as they depart for the table. This is the sort of touch that makes a good dish memorable, and given the modest price tag, underscores the value typical at 25Forty.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cMy Italian is probably better than my English,\u201d says Pelliccia, whose English is as flawless as his gnocchi in Gorgonzola sauce. In 2007, he returned to San Diego to take the chef\u2019s position at Solare. <\/p>\n