Linguini frutti di mare, a consistently provided shellfish pasta special at Parma Cucina Italiana
In the better San Diego space, you could go to three distinctive Italian places to eat each individual 7 days for a calendar year and even now not check out them all. A lot more like 5 a week if you consist of pizza counters. And that wouldn’t involve all the present-day dining places and steakhouses that element pasta menus. It is enough to make you question how we ever have time for Taco Tuesday.
In any case, that’s my justification for getting late to the bash with regard to Parma Cucina Italiana. The charming little Hillcrest restaurant has been active successful around faithful customers for the greater portion of a decade, and I’m sure all of them have been recommending it to mates the complete time. Definitely, I would have have caught on faster, experienced I not been distracted by the annual onslaught of new Italian restaurants that seem to open up every year.
As with so a lot of far more current arrivals, indigenous Italians are at the rear of the menu and ambiance at Parma Cucina, environment a tone equally pleasant and authentic to northern Italy. I’m inclined to consider a deficiency of hoopla or pretension has some thing to do with the cheerful and steadily rising group that crammed its dining home (and parklet seating) on a latest Saturday evening. But, per common, credit have to be offered to the stellar simplicity of the food stuff.
Almost 10 several years in Hillcrest (which more recently incorporates parklet seating).
We began with a salmon carpaccio starter that showcased so significantly fish for $17, I concerned it would derail our appetites. Rather, my wife and I both went on to devour our pasta entrees, and adhere to them up with dessert: 1 of the a lot more satisfying examples of tiramisu I’ve tried out. Even the accompanying espresso shot tasted best.
Irrespective of the type of tried using-and-correct simplicity we encountered — the menu highlights dishes these kinds of as lasagna ($24), pesto with shrimp scampi ($23), and gnocchi with four cheese sauce ($23) — my primary course variety did give me a opportunity to attempt a thing for the to start with time. That would be the stuffed pasta condition, fagottini, built to resemble the type of candy wrapper with a single twist at the major (usually discovered with tough candies). Here, the home made pasta is stuffed with a blend of ricotta cheese and truffle, included in a product sauce featuring far more truffle, as properly as porcini mushrooms ($25). If you locate any dish with a further umami profile, please notify me about it.
A generous part of salmon for a carpaccio appetizer
As a husband, I was specifically appreciative for a dish I did not consider. My wife’s preferred Italian purchase is linguini frutti di mare, in other text shellfish pasta. I have used the far better part of a calendar year taking her close to to Italian restaurants, in research of a fantastic 1, but it’s mainly led to disappointment — specially looking at I get compensated to recommend dining establishments.
A modest, effectively attended Italian cafe — 1 of hundreds in greater San Diego
Finally, listed here was Parma Cucina, with a consistently offered specific, which lays shrimp, mussels, and clams with white wine and tomato sauce, more than your decision of linguini or risotto. Not only is it one of the restaurant’s additional visually stimulating dishes, it attained me bonus points for scheduling a intimate evening out.
Stuffed pasta in the shape of sweet in a single-twist wrapper, filled with truffle and ricotta cheese, n a creamy mushroom sauce
That claimed, when I do it again, it will be on Tuesday. That is owing to an ongoing unique that price ranges a a few-course food for two at $56. Now that I’m ultimately acquainted with the pleasant night out offered by Parma Cucina Italiana, I may possibly have to leave Taco Tuesdays to the one people.