The Toronto Star
www.thestar.com
Dining Out
Saturday, February 12th, 2005
Food and Drink, page H12
Andy MurdockExpect a hearty wecome!
2.5 (out of four)
Chef: Carmine Accogli
Seating: 38 upstairs and there is a special-events "grotto" downstairs that seats 25.
Wheelchair access: Difficult. The space is cramped, the entrance is awkward and the toilets are downstairs.
Price: $40 including wine per person, excluding tip and taxes.
This Monday think outside the box. Susur's, Bymark, Canoe — all the classy joints are already snapped up. But people with reservations there miss the point. Valentine's Day is not about eating the best food in town, it's about romance. Who do you love more, your partner or your stomach?
My earliest awakenings of the heart occurred courtesy of the Walt Disney Co. Now, heavyweight cultural thinkers may call me another member of the moronic inferno for saying so, but when I think romance, I think Lady and the Tramp.
Therefore, my perfect Valentine's Day dinner would take place with my sweetheart on a crate behind a friendly Italian restaurant. It would end with an accidental kiss while slurping on the same spaghetti noodle. Okay, so it's February — kinda cold to eat in an alleyway. I will settle for eating at the hospitable Big Ragu, a year-old trattoria run by Carmine Accogli.
Carmine (everyone goes by first names at The Big Ragu) opens up a basement grotto for special occasions, such as Monday. It looks like the unused back room of an Italian men's club: cheap chairs, brick walls, fake wood, low ceilings; an axe and a shield and some fairy lights dress up the walls. Already I can hear whispers, laughter and music light up the empty room.
Upstairs, wine comes in wide-mouth jugs and welcomes come with open arms. The place has gusto, darnit.
The antipasto for two is a big plate of food for a measly 10 bucks. A slice of prosciutto is wrapped around a whole ball of bocconcini. An incredible spicy sopressata (flat salami), quality pitted black olives, fresh roasted peppers and a southern-style pecorino cheese called Crotonese. Everything comes with toasted foccacia bread made on the premises.
The grilled calamari ($11) is excellent, too. You taste fresh fish and the grill; they're not rubbery, but have a meaty crustaceous texture instead. The dish is garnished simply with lemon and a dash of balsamic vinegar. For the pasta and bean soup the server said we had to stir it up to get to the treasures down below. So, like Jacques Cousteau, we dove in with our spoons through the beany sauce, past the firm pasta, to find the hidden melted mozzarella at the bottom. The "magic mushroom" salad ($12), composed of Portobello and white cap mushrooms broiled with butter, oil, breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese on a bed on mesclun, is covered two dressings: first, lemon and oil; second, a sweet balsamic reduction. Great dressing, but overall, not as good as the version they serve at Terroni.
The penne "al Ragu" with a Calabrese sauce ($10) is from a family recipe. Carmine's family used to eat this every Sunday. Chunks of lamb shoulder slow cooked in a thick tomato sauce, but more rosemary would have made this a killer dish. Another dish, a roast leg of lamb rubbed with rosemary, was too dry and needed to be braised longer — though the accompanying roast potatoes were just right.
"Please, don't put (Parmesan cheese) on this. My mother would be upset," Carmine says to us as he presents the linguine con vongole ($13). The fresh clams' juices mix with white wine and garlic — but alas, the clams were not washed enough. The whole dish is gritty. Not just a little gritty, but very gritty, ruining an otherwise fine plate of pasta.
More of that brassy salami comes on top of the Calabrese pizza ($10) along with hot peppers, a hefty amount of mozzarella and lots of sauce. Luckily the thin crust is as strong as a certain kind of wiry Italian I used to work with in Montréal: laconic, honest to a fault and capable of lifting twice his weight without buckling. The risotto is a more feminine dish than the pizza ($14). She's soft-spoken — maybe a little too soft-spoken — and doesn't ply you with too much butter, cheese or wine, just a pleasant mushroom taste that goes well with a teaspoon of Parmesan.
As the server puts the lasagna in front of me, she says, "You gotta tell me what you think. Everyone tells me it's better than their home recipe!" Yeah, but my lasagna is lousy, I reply. A further confession: normally, I avoid restaurant lasagnas because they always arrive an overcooked, cheesy, saucy mess. I am glad, however, that I chose to eat the Big Ragu lasagna. Layers and layers of impossibly thin handmade noodles are separated by modest amounts of sauce, cheese, béchamel and meat; a well balanced baked noodle dish that left me with room for dessert.
Which brings us to the tiramisu made by Carmine's wife, Barbara. Fluffy, creamy and mildly rummy, it's another one of those workaday desserts that rarely excels, but never disappoints. Better order a coffee too, because when the bill arrives the server will offer you a shot of limoncello or grappa: not to help you cope with a big bill, but out of generosity, silly. The Big Ragu is very affordable.
What really sold me on this place was the atmosphere on the night we ate there. It was a quiet weeknight and the whole family hung out drinking coffee. The baby smiled beatifically. Then the kitchen staff came out to eat. They laid out bowls of pasta, rapini, roast potatoes and a platter of fish next to us. They gave us a shot of grappa.
As they tucked in, we spent the next 20 minutes talking about southern Italy; how foreign tourists always travel the north and how all the northern Italians vacation down south. The south is like their little secret, where you see cliffs and water like in the Elvis movies, Carmine says.
Then he described a five-course meal in which he took a break halfway through just to walk around and digest a bit. It was one of those magical one-off nights when you sneak a peek into a restaurant's soul. Judging by the quality of soul I witnessed at the Big Ragu, I'd say your Valentine's Day will be in good hands here.
