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Hours:
Our Bar opens at 5:30pm nightly
We Open:
Monday ~ Friday: 6
Saturday: 5.30
Our Last Table:
Monday ~ Thursday: 9:30
Friday & Saturday: 10:30
Sundays 11 am 'til 8:30
{brunch 11 'til 3}
kitchen closes 30 minutes after last table seated.
Dino, including our patio, is non smoking!
Restaurant Week {3 courses for $35.12} thru February 3
Complementary cicchetto, then choose 3 courses from our full menu plus after dinner drink & chocolate truffle
New & Good on the Menu
Our Wild Mushroom Soup is super simple. This week, we have wild hedgehogs and yellowfoot chanterelle mushrooms from the Pacific Northwest. We sauté them with green garlic in a bit of Trickling Springs small batch churned butter {amazingly wonderful stuff we just recently started using} and then cook in a blend of veggie stock & heavy cream. We finish the soup with our array of exotic spices. The result is a decadently rich soup that isn’t made heavy by the addition of flour or from the over reduction of the cream. It’s just chucks of ‘shrooms in a light cream broth.
Peposo is a famous old recipe from the town of Imprunetta south of Florence. It might have remained a local dish had it not been for the building of the Duomo in Florence, overseen by Brunelleschi in the 1400s. The great architect built an oven for baking the bricks for the dome right next to the cathedral. So at night, he had the peppery stew cooked in this oven in the banked embers of the fire. The hot earthenware pots of stew were taken up to the workers where they not only warmed their insides, but the pots themselves acted as heaters high above Florence. {I would never even mention the story that he chose the peppery stew so he could use spoiled beef to save money!}
Our Peposo is a traditional one {without tomato: remember that the tomato was only introduced to Italy AFTER Colombo’s voyages and not used in cooking ‘til much later} and non traditional as we se Short Rib instead of the more typical shank. We use our local farms beef shortrib {dry aged Maryland or Virginia beef: no feedlots, hormones, growth stimulant, steroids ever, raised on small farms in Maryland & Virginia.} After long slow oven braising in red wine, garlic, herbs and tons of fresh cracked black pepper, we place it on a bed of horseradish spiked mashed celeriac & potatoes.
Arrista is what the Tuscans call a pork roast made in the style of Porchetta. Bev Eggleston is one hell of a Pig…. Guy. This former vegetarian is now one of the leaders in the local pig movement. We buy his pigs, who are raised on a family of local farms in Virginia and North Carolina using open pastures and natural feeds. These pigs are a cross of a few heritage breeds. No “Other White Meat” here… this pig is old fashioned: dark fleshed and full of flavorful fat.
We slow roast the leg seven hours with a spice rub of fennel, sage & garlic over a bed of onions. The meat is sliced thin, bathed in the onion & pork jus, and served with stewed beans & greens.
And remember that we also offer Rosticiana, the traditional grilled spare ribs of Tuscany rarely seen in restaurants over here. These are spare ribs cut cross bone, spice rubbed and grilled. They are not long cooked and are not “fall off the bone” style. Rosticiana is chewy, with a crispy spice crust. We serve it our warm cabbage & radish slaw. We only get 50# of these amazing ribs every Friday, so when they are gone, that’s it 'til the next week.
We really believe in the foods we offer, both on a taste basis, but just as importantly, on the basis of how they are farmed, made or fished. Where you spend your food dollars really tells our economy what kind of world you want to live in. We hope you appreciate what we do in this regard.
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