Dinner at Cotto Enoteca

After being wowed by Chef Alex Tung at a Cotto Enoteca lunch service in the summer, I couldn't wait to take my parents there to try out additional items. The chef is one of my mom's favourites ever since I took her to his previous restaurant for her birthday. 

 

We started off dinner with a few glasses of prosecco, which should be served in these glasses and not flutes, as I learned at the Blue Water Cafe Autumn Wine Dinner. 
And this was the bread with the delicious spread of Canellini beans & truffle oil. The bread was airy with lots of holes just begging to be smothered with the spread.
This is the Insalata Rucola and is loaded with toppings such as cubed Gorgonzola cheese, diced cucumbers and cantaloupe and a very generous sprinkling of pinenuts. The base of the salad was a Barnston Island arugula, with just a light bitter crunch. A red wine vinaigrette brought everything together nicely.

I really liked the meatballs from my lunch visit, so I made sure that we also ordered them again, the Cotto Polpetti. Simply made with just some bread crumbs and served with a tangy tomato sauce and some fried pizza dough. It's classic, elegant and quite delicious. The meatballs themselves were very moist and the bread and tomato sauce were excellent accompaniments.
For the mains, we settled on two, the first being the Tagliatelle Bolognese. Ribbons upon ribbons of perfectly cooked pasta, tossed with a blend of ground Pemberton Meadows beef, cubes of Sloping Hill pancetta simmered with vegetables, wine and tomatoes into a rich sauce. Add some Parmigiano-Reggiano and that's it.
Since I had already tried the Linguini Cabonara during my lunch visit, I decided to give the Pizza Carbonara a  try this time. The pizza is baked with guanciale, roasted garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano & Pecorino Romano. And then a 63 degree egg is placed on top when it comes out of the oven. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is not a poached egg. Rather the egg is cooked "in the shell" to 63 degrees so that the yolk has a custardly texture and the whites are more or less cooked through. Done in an immersion circulator, this can take up to an hour. But the results are well worth it. Either on pasta or pizza, or a piece of plain white bread, this egg suddenly becomes the best sauce. It doesn't add much to the taste of the dish, but the creaminess it imparts onto what ever it is oozing over is very delightful.

Take Note:

• Try the housemade Limoncello
• Get something, anything, with the 63 degree egg
• Open for brunch on weekends