Just like Nonna used to make

Simple food, elegant flavors at Il Casale

July 08, 2009|Devra First, Globe Staff

Former governor Mitt Romney, producer David E. Kelley, and Esquire restaurant critic John Mariani are in the house. You might expect to find such an assortment of diners in New York or Los Angeles. Yet the three are among the crowd at Il Casale, chef Dante de Magistris’s new Italian restaurant in Belmont, on a recent Tuesday night.

Crowd? Celebrities? Belmont? Tuesday? Il Casale deserves the attention and the attendance. With his father, Leon, and brothers Damian and Filippo, de Magistris has turned a former firehouse into a lovely restaurant, a large yet warm (and loud) space of brick walls, exposed beams, and high ceilings, lit by wrought-iron chandeliers and glass lanterns. The room is divided in half by long, dark curtains, with a lively bar scene on the left in full view of the Sox on TV, and a lively dining room on the right in full view of the open kitchen. The fire pole remains, though it had to be relocated: It was right in the middle of the garde manger.

The food is also lovely and lively. It is a snapshot of how tastes have changed. Rustic and simple are the new elegant. (A “casale’’ is a house in the Italian countryside.) Luxury may be best achieved by paring back, showcasing a few flavors and ingredients. These don’t need to be so-called “luxury’’ ingredients. Chicken liver on bruschetta can outsilk foie gras. A deeply porky broth with braised greens and a charred wedge of polenta - peasant food; something made, wonderfully, from little; every molecule of flavor squeezed from the pig - can be as complex as any creation from the rarefied air of the gastronomic pinnacles. This dish, minestra, has apparently made several grown men cry. It tastes like the minestra their grandmothers made, a long-lost memory rushing back in a spoonful. You may have to wait to find out if it has the same effect on you; it’s coming off the menu for the summer.

It’s no accident it tastes like Nonna’s; many of the dishes here are based on family recipes. De Magistris, who also runs the eponymous Dante in Cambridge, has created an appealing menu of sfizi (little tastes), pasta, meat and fish, and side dishes. There are also two family-style tasting menus: the Fiat, $35 for four courses, and the Ferrari, $60 for five courses plus sfizi and other such bites.

If you start with sfizi, don’t miss the meatballs, available in three fantastic iterations. There’s the traditional version, in a pure tomato sugo, or sauce. There’s a salt cod version, evoking the flavors of Sicily with pine nuts and raisins. Perhaps the best is the maiale, or pork - juicy and tender and filled, surprisingly, with mozzarella, in a pool of sauce made from pig’s head.