dining
Taste of Italy , North and South Unassuming BYOBexcels at pasta and gelato WRITTEN BY ESTHERDAVIDOWITZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY MITSU YASUKAWA
Our meal did not start out well .
On arecent balmy evening , my dining companion and Itook our seats at one of two bistro tables infront of Palato Caffe & Cucina , acozy new Italian restaurant onBloomfield Avenue , and soon enough found ourselves doing what we ’ d end updoing much of the evening : waiting .
For our water . For our bread . For our appetizers . And , perhaps the longest wait of all , for our entrees . By dessert time , we knew the drill : we waited .
Terrible , you say ? Bet it was worse for our waiter , an affable , hardworking man who also had to serve every one of the six tables inside and the four guests atthe counter himself due to the severe labor shortage restaurants are facing . ( His colleague , he later told us , was out due to an “ accident .”) Considering the pandemic ’ s continuing devastating toll on restaurants — higher food prices , food shortages , the aforementioned labor scarcity — Iknow to leave my attitude at home . Besides , Idon ’ t mind waiting — ifthe food is good . What ’ s alittle time lost compared to athrilling meal gained ?
The meal was not thrilling at Palato , at first . Then , our entrées arrived . And , wow ! The caserecce in awhite veal ragu and fettuccine ai funghi had us in an epicurean reverie .
Imagine broad strands of housemade fettuccine swathed in an array of earthy , slightly nuttytasting mushrooms — shiitake , porcini , cremini , portabella — wearing a spritz of truffle oil and adash of minced garlic and , ecco ,
PALATOCAFFE & CUCINA
377 BLOOMFIELDAVE . MONTCLAIR ( 973 ) 509-0416 PALATOCAFFE . COM
TRENTO MEETS PUGLIA ( Top ) Pasta with white veal ragu ; ( Above ) Owner Massimo Apicella and chef Stefano Bosetti .
heaven . Simple ? Sure . Delicious ? You bet .
Or picture a plate of short twists of pasta known as caserecce blanketed by a tender white veal ragu dotted with diced sweet carrots and caramelized onions that have been seasoned with rosemary , thyme and sage .
Chef Stefano Bosetti , who hails from Trento and now lives in Montclair , and owner Massimo Apicella , originally from Puglia and today a resident of Bloomfield , worked together in Hell ’ s Kitchen before deciding to go on their own and open Palato . It ’ s charming , small ( 20 seats ) and inviting , the kind of neighborhood place that ’ s fine for a grilled sandwich and cappuccino at lunch , a sweet and soda as asnack , and afull dinner come evening . The wine and beer is on you ; it ’ s a BYOB .
Bosetti and Apicella divided the menu into sections of Italian food categories that may be unfamiliar , despite the abundance of Italian restaurants in New Jersey . Among them : pizza and focaccia , panzerotti ( fried and stuffed half-moon dough pockets ), panini ( press-grilled sandwiches ) and taglieri ( charcuterie and cheese boards ).
Bosetti , who works in a small open kitchen , admits that he has no room for apizza oven and thus uses aregular oven to cook his pizzas inatray . The Margherita pizza I had , two sizeable slices , were not a favorite ; they could have benefited from more salt and basil .
Bosetti says he thought a lot about the Palato salad , an unusual seafood salad that showcased crab meat and shrimp and featured chunks of creamy avocado , slabs of delicate hearts of palm and slivers of crunchy celery . The whole shebang was enveloped in a poppy seed lemon dressing .
Bosetti does his best in asmall kitchen , cooking much of the food from scratch , from the tagliolini to the lasagna to the tomato sauce . And if he can ’ t make it in-house , he gets high-quality products from vendors who specialize in Italian imports .
Which brings us to dessert , specifically gelato . “ We get it from avendor on Long Island ,” Bosetti says . “ We fell in love with their gelato .”
My dining companion and I did , too . It was organic , rich and creamy . Highly recommended : the pistachio . Or enjoy it as I did in an affogato , my latest dessert fixation — two hefty scoops of vanilla gelato doused with strong espresso . It is worth the calories — and the wait . ■
32 FALL 2021 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE