Frank Sabatini Jr. | Downtown Restaurant Review
Monello
750 W. Fir St. (Little Italy)
619-501-0030
Prices: Breakfast, $7 to $10. Dinner, $8 to $14 for appetizers; $12 to $24 for pastas, pizzas and entrees.
There are several dishes at Monello that you probably won’t find at other Milanese restaurants throughout San Diego. The menu is a celebration of northern Italy’s modern-day street food, as translated by Valentina DiPietro, her husband Guido Nistri and their executive chef Fabrizio Cavallini. The trio also operates Bencotto Italian Kitchen next door, which is more pasta-focused in comparison.
At Monello, which translates to “naughty little boy,” dinner begins with complimentary cannellini beans in their shells, spiked with a little rosemary, sage and salt. Proceed onto appetizers and you’ll encounter house-baked piadina flat bread playing star to a unique selection of “rolled bites” filled with various cheeses, meats and vegetables.
The porchetta option was sensational, boasting swirls of the herby roasted pork along with snappy arugula and buttery Fontina cheese. The bread appears like a flour tortilla, but it’s much airier, allowing you to effortlessly consume every last pinwheel on the plate without bloating your belly.
From a short list of pasta dishes, the dye-cut spaghetti with garlic, Fresno peppers and creamy tomato sauce is served with toasted bread crumbs.
Unless you grew up with immigrant Italian parents or traveled extensively throughout Italy, you wouldn’t know that the herbed crumbs were used generations ago over pasta as an alternative (or addition) to Parmesan cheese. The extra texture they provide feels both novel and natural.
Visiting with a Monello regular who lives conveniently above the restaurant in “The Q” building, we zeroed in on a few other dishes he hadn’t tried. From the polenta category, for example, we raised the volume by choosing sausage with the creamy grains rather than the porcini mushrooms he ordered previously. Just as we hoped, the meat was spiked liberally with hot pepper flakes and fennel – otherwise it isn’t Italian sausage in my book. A few dollops of rich tomato sauce staining the yellow polenta added heart and soul to the flavor profile.
Equally memorable, in the liquid sense, were a couple tall glasses of sweet vermouth infused in-house with more than 20 different herbs and botanicals. On this cold, dry evening the concoction warmed us to the toes, offering hints of anise, orange peel and cinnamon. The booze list also spotlights infused grappa, local craft beers and inventive cocktails like the bourbon-based vecchio stile that incorporates aromatized wine (chinato) and a sugar cube.
Monello’s pizza dough is fermented for about two days, resulting in a pillowy chew that isn’t generally achieved in our semi-arid climate. We ordered the Bencotto topped with red sauce, mozzarella and ricotta, but with a special request for raspadura cheese on the side, which comes on a sausage-spinach pie that my companion remembered fondly from a past visit.
Raspadura is a mouthwatering curd hailing from an area south of Milan. It’s softer and slightly milder than Parmesan, but still maintains an exemplary nutty flavor. If it weren’t so scarce, I’d keep it stocked in my refrigerator and shave it onto everything – risotto, eggs, pasta and breads.
The menu, which doubles as your tablemat, highlights several entrees that might be cumbersome eating on the streets of Milan: roasted pork neck with mashed potatoes; grilled octopus with fennel and celery; and whole sea bass. Though tempting, you’d have to realistically forgo many of the shareable dishes we ate, as well as an array of salumi that fits into the restaurant’s casual grazing concept.
Regardless of your intake, the dessert called isola galleggiante is a must-try. It features a cloud of meringue set in a pond of crème anglaise that stands up to the best toothsome versions you’ll find in France. Fear not, it’s innocuously light.
Monello’s chic, industrial atmosphere is warm and endearing, and also a place where you actually hear Italian spoken among devoted patrons. If you’re looking for the latest and greatest renditions of northern Italy’s classic cuisine, or a morning frittata with oven-fresh pastries, you’ve come to the right doorstep.
Frank Sabatini Jr. is the author of Secret San Diego (ECW Press), and began writing about food two decades ago as a staffer for the former San Diego Tribune. He has since covered the culinary scene extensively for NBC; Pacific San Diego Magazine; San Diego Uptown News; Gay San Diego; Living in Style Magazine and The Gay & Lesbian Times. You can reach him at [email protected].
