Lost in translation
Pacific Beach's Enoteca Adriano's first draft needs a little fine-tuning
Photo by Dhanraj Emanuel
Enoteca Adriano
4864 Cass St.
Pacific Beach
858-490-0085
I’m trying my best not to be bitter, but I’m supposed to be in Italy right now. The trip would have been one for the books, timed to hit truffle season in Piedmont, with stops at a couple craft breweries near Milan. We’d do the whole agri-tourismo thing in Tuscan wine country and then settle into an apartment in Florence. It was ambitious. It would have been amazing. It was too expensive. It would have cost too much to do all the things I wanted to do, especially in these uncertain times.
So, the trip has been postponed, hopefully just until next fall. I’ve mostly been fine with it, but every now and then, when I’m staring at the computer screen for the fifth consecutive hour, I start thinking about where I should be and what I could be eating. And though I do wish, very earnestly, that my recent meals at Enoteca Adriano could have eased the regret of this missed trip, the food does not hold up well in comparison, despite the restaurant’s best intentions.
Chef-owner Franco Tassone has been cooking and restauranteur-ing locally for 20 years, including at an original Italian spot in the Gaslamp and a Garnet Avenue tapas lounge that was a little too Downtown for Pacific Beach. In late 2008, he transformed a North P.B. Mexican torta shop from the ground up and opened Enoteca (meaning “wine shop”) Adriano this summer on a quiet block whose sidewalks see more strollers and dog-walkers than partiers. The cottage is charming, spare but comfortable and welcoming. Neighborhood regulars are greeted warmly by the friendly young staff and offered generous tastes of wine. A painted quote on a back wall reads, translated from Italian, “A day without wine is like a day without sun.” And a chalkboard lists nightly specials, including lasagna and osso buco.
It started as a simple wine bar, with a list of all-Italian wines and a menu of snacks for pairing: cheese and salumi plates and small paninis. A few pastas were offered, until they became so popular that the enoteca became more of an osteria, with a bigger lineup of more substantial dishes. I wish it had stayed as it was. The pastas, although well-liked by the regulars and take-out crowd, are mostly unremarkable and oftentimes served lukewarm. The chef occasionally makes his own gnocchi from scratch, but it’s sometimes store-bought, as is the seafood ravioli. A Tuscan white bean soup had underdone veggies and so much cubed pancetta that it was too salty to finish, even for this diehard fan of savory pork products.
I would go back to Enotica Adriano, to sit on the sidewalk patio and share a bottle of Italian wine with friends. I can recommend the appetizers featuring mozzarella’s silky cousin, burrata, a sphere with a tender skin of mozzarella surrounding fresh cheese curds and cream. It’s lush and lovely, either on a plate with honey-sprinkled rolls of raw zucchini, cherry tomatoes and candied pecans or atop their Insalata di Casa, less a salad than a hearty square of toasted bread, sprinkled with chopped tomato, onions and fresh basil, then drizzled with olive oil and a balsamic reduction.
But if we were still hungry, I’d probably invite everyone back to my house for one of my favorite simple pastas—spaghetti tossed with garlic, olive oil and hot pepper flakes or maybe gnudi—little dumplings made with ricotta instead of gnocchi’s traditional potato. We could always walk back to the restaurant for dessert, bringing our own bottle of wine (free corkage on Mondays through Wednesdays). The signature dessert, cheekily called The Pope’s Pillow—a rectangle of puff pastry split and filled with custard and a strawberry-mascarpone cheese mix—is a sweet distraction to temporarily appease my travel bug.
Write to candicew@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
Comments
I love this place so much. This review does not do it justice at all. I've had several fantastic meals at Enoteca Adriano... Too bad the author could not get over the bitterness of having to cancel her luxurious trip to Italy!
Okay, first of all, enoteca means wine library....a direct reference to the word "biblioteca". Secondly, sorry Miss Woo didn't make it to Italy, these are tough times. Which makes me wonder why she would write such a heartless and thoughtless review!
I disagree on so many levels with this terrible critique! I recommend readers go try it out for themselves. I love the orrecchetti bosco or the linguini neri, both amazing. I too have traveled all over Italy and consider the food at Enoteca Adriano to be authentic and unique. I suggest Miss Woo check her facts and not drag her personal life into her reviews. Talk about sour grapes!!!
Wow..miss Woo!!
You are comparing the food that you had at Enoteca Adriano to your trip to Italy that never happened....amazing that you are actually paid to write this sfuff up and as far as you inviting us back to your place for some chinese korean gnocchi...no thanks!
Thank you Enoteca Adriano...for those of us less fortunate to travel to Italy~
I can only hope your dates use your same reasoning style and compare their experience with you to the date with Halle Berry that they never managed to get.
I've been going to Enoteca Adriano about every other week or so since they opened over the summer, and I've been delighted every time. I suggest readers check out the reviews on yelp and then visit themselves.
“The pastas, although well-liked by the regulars and take-out crowd, are mostly unremarkable and oftentimes served lukewarm...” Interesting. All these regulars and the “takeout crowds” many of whom including myself have spent some time In Italy, unlike the author I might add, must be just idiots. I think I am going back again to Enoteca Adriano and taste again those unremarkable and lukewarm meatballs with pasta. May be I will come to my senses and realize how undercooked my food is and how I am not supposed to enjoy what I have been enjoying so far. Or, may be not. May be I will just ask myself what the heck was this review about??? Did the author visit the same place that I and many other regulars love to visit? And to all of you because of whom I have not been able to get my osso buco fix on the last few Saturdays I say, this osso buco is bland, leave it alone. For me. Please.
My husband and I have been regulars since Enoteca Adriano opened. I have had the tuscon white bean soup at least five times, it has allways been perfect.....all of their soups are made to order, and as fresh as you will ever have. The burrata zucchini, also my favorite has grilled zucchini not Raw veggies as Miss Woo notes.
The aurhor shares in two paragraghs her bitterness about missing out her chance to nail some hot young Italian boy in Fireza and the joy of having hogs and pigs shower her with truffles.
Miss woo sugests that we aviod the luckewarm unremarkable pasta...but do go there for the wonderfull antipasti....and if we are still hungry, hey let's head back to her place, smoke a joint, throw some garlic and pasts together...and then if we still have the munchies...let's go back to Enoteca Adriano for dessert....Hey Candice grab the btl of 2buckchuck on the way back, free corkage night
Woo's LOST IN TRANSPORTATION.
To the Editor of CityBeat
Restaurant reviews should be about the restaurant in review, not about some pissed of PMS wanna be writer who missed out on her trip and insultes the restaurant posting her recipes are better!
Shame on CityBeat
your weekly just got thinner~
WOW....This Woo chick thinks incredibly highly of herself. What makes her tastebuds so much more refined and superior to the "regulars and take-out crowd" that dineat Enoteca? She sounds like she has something to prove to herself and/or her peers with her 'recipes' and AMBITIONS of someday making it to Italy.
My Advice Mrs. Woo: Save up your money, and take your vacation, instead of taking it out on the restaurants that you write about.
Not very professional.
Ciao amici,
Grazie mille!! for your feed back over the last week. From your comments, and our patrons who have shown great support, to my wonderful staff, friends and Italian chefs in San diego and family.
I feel Miss Woo's pain for her missed first class trip to Italy. I am sorry that I was not able to recreate her fantasy of Italian food and her feelings of bitterness before she entered my new restaurant.
I would like to point out that our zucchini burrata is served with grilled zucchini infused with balsamic reduction, not served raw as Woo writes. Our unremarkable lukewarm pasta dishes wicth Miss Woo failes to discribe are always served 30 seconds off the pan. Our gnocchi, lasagna, black linguini, meatballs, osso buco, arancini, parpadelle pasta, ravioli and desserts are all prepared in house...NOT and I repeat not store bought!
I would gladly invite Miss woo back into my kitchen to help me every morning prepare my nighty specials.I would show her the passion, art and love of making fresh pastas and desserts. So that when she invites you back to her place for pasta she can have something to talk about...like when I took her index finger and slowly guided it up and down my potato and ricotta dumplings. But then again I think NOT.
I hope that she makes it to my country one day...she just might come back better educated and not so bitter~
Note: Beside our lukewarm unremakable pasta and raw veggies. Enoteca Adriano showcases select Italian wines, wine tasting, food pairings and daily wine flights...that Miss Woo failed to mention.
This reviewer should be investigated, I,am sure she was paid off from some nervous and worried restauranteur who feels that Enoteca Adriano delicious food is taking away buisness from them.
The food, wine and pricing here are a blessing for us residents in North Pacific Beach.
A Big Boo Boo on Miss Woo~
On a scale of "HIT or MISS" it seems that unfortunatly Miss Woo has struck out...
We have been extreamly delighted on our every visit to Enoteca Adriano. The food, a HIT every time, service and ambiance are truly unique and a wellcome addition to Pacific Beach.
There must be a good reason why she is the only one that got served raw vegetables and too much pork.......
DR. Joyce.