His recently concluded decade as owner-chef of Silver Spoon in Roncesvalles taught us to expect big, honest flavours from Rocco Agostino. The phenomenal success of Pizzeria Libretto where he is chef and co-owner proved he has his finger on the syncopated pulse of popular taste. Now Enoteca Sociale (same ownership team as Libretto) brings everything together. No pizza this time, but hearty, simple Italian food and once again nightly line-ups at the door. My wife and I showed up there last Thursday and were greeted with the news that we’d have to wait an hour for a table. The charming hostess suggested we cross the road to Brockton General, have a drink at the bar there and she would phone us when a table was ready. I don’t own a cell phone, of course; neither does my wife. “Never mind,” smiled the hostess. “I’ll call Pam [Pam Thomson and Brie Read are co-owners of Brockton General] and she can let you know.”
So a happy upshot all round, really. Good that Enoteca is SO busy, good that it is so well staffed, and good that we got to pay an unexpected visit to the always delightful Brockton G, which was itself pretty full. We sat at the bar and talked to Pam and Brie and Pam cured the hiccups that had afflicted me for 30 hours by offering a shot glass of chef Guy Rawlings’s house-made cider vinegar. I don’t know if my spasmous diaphragm was paralyzed by the acidity or seduced by the vinegar’s wonderful flavour, but it did the trick. Then the call came and we hurried back across the road and resumed our evening at Enoteca Sociale.
The place was certainly buzzing. We sat at the narrow wooden bar – a good vantage point for wine-lovers who can check out the long, impressive list of Italian and Canadian vini (80 wines under $80 is the boast). Some of the tables beside us were high-tops which made us feel less exposed on our tall stools, more part of the room. The décor is consciously casual – tiled floor, dark wooden tables, whitewashed brick walls – hard surfaces that amplify the sound of merry diners to such a degree that noise begins to be a problem. A friend of ours, a former audiologist and speech therapist, has a theory that the iPod generations who now spend their lives in a full-time ambience of music have already damaged their hearing and therefore speak more loudly. I totally buy that. It’s also true that only the most sophisticated restaurant designers pause to think about noise. At Nota Bene, for example, acoustics engineers were consulted and the dining room ended up with camouflaged acoustic panels on the ceiling and padding on the undersides of the tables to deaden sound bouncing up off the hardwood floor… I know – probably not within the budget of most restaurateurs. At Enoteca, those who are sensitive to cacophony might wish to book the small room in the basement. It has a fine view into the humidity-controlled cave where Agostino ages his collection of cherished cheeses.
Those cheeses (Italian and Canadian, all sourced through Cheese Boutique) occupy half the menu – a fine show of respect, with 31 available on the night of our visit. Prices reflect the care taken: one cheese for $7, three for $18, five for $29 – though the menu doesn’t specify how large portions are. For a moment we thought about forgetting dinner and just making a night of cheese and wine but wisdom prevailed.
Agostino describes the food at the Enoteca as “inspired by classic Roman cuisine and Nonna’s cooking.” At this time of year, it’s also thoroughly tuned into fall and early-winter textures and flavours. Pickles are part of the season in Italy and they are here too in a dish of thickly sliced Ontario buffalo mozzarella, firmish and tasting of cream, strewn with capers, black olives, a couple of slices of red chili pepper, flecks of pickled onions, coarsely chopped chunks of pickled eggplant and cured anchovy fillets. The mild, sweet cheese was just enough to withstand the barrage of salty and sour but only after bread showed up to restore the balance.
Baccala cakes are fabulous fish cakes studded with chunks of potato and salt cod in a crisp golden crust. The kitchen sets them over a stiff, pungently garlic-driven aïoli, scatters fried chickpeas around them, then strews everything with slightly wilty arugula that lacks the energy to make much of a contribution. But salting is a problem with the dish. You can still taste the flavour of salt in the cod – which is lovely – but someone has then flung a mighty pinch of sea salt at the cakes as they came out of the pan, and the same sensibility has salted the aïoli and the chickpeas. Too much seasoning actually starts to mask the flavours it should be enhancing and an otherwise super dish is marred.
Spaghetti cacio e pepe is a delightfully simple dish of perfectly textured spaghetti with finely grated pecorino cheese and freshly ground black pepper. It sounds so easy but all three ingredients have to be brilliantly judged to make magic happen. This time Agostino hits it out of the park.
Some secondi get a little more complicated. I don’t often see goat outside a Caribbean or south Asian restaurant. Here, they treat it like porchetta, deboning the animal and stuffing it with a loose farce of pork n’dua, the internal parts of a pig that usually get little attention. The goat’s texture is as fine as young veal, its sweet flavour again over-seasoned and dominated by a garlicky green gremolata spread on top of each slice. Around it are soft chunks of roasted squash, some kale and a light meaty jus.
Creemore farmed Ontario ranibow trout is treated beautifully, a fillet pan-fried until the skin crisps but the flesh stays moist, set over firm brussels sprouts and creamy mashed squash. We shared one of the vegetable side dishes between the two mains, a heap of soft roasted purple beets with some bitter greens, a sweet-tangy balsamic reduction and a splodge of stracciatella on top (not the soup called stracciatella, but the cheese made of torn-up mozarella and cream that is sometimes used to stuff burrata and has the tetxture of rich, creamy cottage cheese).
After that, the thought of more formaggi seemed less attractive so we ordered a dessert, unaware we were about to taste one of the most delicious puds in the city. It’s just a vanilla panna cotta but the texture is simply ambrosial – soft yet not at all runny, wobbly, creamy, too insubstantial to stand up for itself if it weren’t relaxing in a ramekin… Crumbled on top are crushed smoked pecans that fall into the panna cotta every time the spoon enters that smooth, snow-white embrace. Wonderful stuff.
Anitpasti $8-$12; pasta $12-$15; secondi $15-$18. Panna Cotta $8. Enoteca Sociale is open daily from 5:00pm (public holidays excepted). Some tables can be reserved.
1288 Dundas Street West (at Coolmine Road). 416 534 1200. www.sociale.ca
