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La Morra
Satisfy your craving for real Italian food
BY ROBERT NADEAU
La Morra
(617) 739-0007
48 Boylston Street (Rte. 9), Brookline
Open Sun–Thu, 5:30–10 p.m., and Fri–Sat, 5:30–11 p.m.
AE, DC, Di, MC, Vi
Full bar
Valet parking $8
Access up three steps from street level; bathroom down full flight of stairs

La Morra’s kitchen features veterans of Waltham’s Tuscan Grill who have moved mentally north and east to offer a menu of Venetian bar snacks, but then quickly back for appetizers, entrées, and wines in the style of Tuscany. The space is a tricky pair of rooms that used to be Fajitas & ’Ritas; before that, it was a macrobiotic dive called Open Sesame, with a bookstore upstairs. At the moment, you want a table upstairs, where it’s warm, even though the kitchen is downstairs. Downstairs has a draft problem, despite the deployment of space heaters and doorways kept sealed like a Star Wars airlock. The staff works hard to accommodate customers, given these problems, and La Morra is already quite popular with what looks like a Brookline crowd, well-heeled and a little older than many restaurants seem to want these days. Since this group is already forming lines on weeknights, however, La Morra would be wise to cater, perhaps with somewhat better lighting and noise reduction. But management may take the position that those lines mean people like it the way it is — I certainly did once the food came out.

Things begin very well with crusty Italian bread and a spread of crumbled fresh cheese in olive oil. One then tends to try the cicchetti, allegedly the Adriatic answer to tapas. These little bites just barely appetize — they’re more like the garnishes on fancy appetizers. For example, fried sage ($3) is four fresh sage leaves, each breaded and fried to a tiny fritter, with an intriguing, almost fishy flavor. White anchovies ($3.25) were my favorite, five richly flavored, salty fillets. Pickled vegetables ($3) are crisp and lightly salty: two slices each of beet and onion, and one bit of carrot, cauliflower, and cherry pepper. The olive frite ($3) has four olives, stuffed with meat and anchovy, breaded and fried. Even the Tuscan meatballs ($4) are two small meatballs, with an intriguing hint of Tuscan pork sausage. The only one of these that lingers at all is the arancini di riso ($4), a pair of fried rice dumplings filled with some very beefy beef, maybe oxtail.

Real appetizers are described as antipasti or primi (meaning appetizer-size portions of pasta). The latter are outstanding, judging by the tagliatelle with porcini ($9) and the bucatini alla carbonara ($10). The tagliatelle, a little wider than fettuccini, have a delightful chewy texture that picks up the light sauce of my favorite wild mushrooms. The bucatini are spaghetti-caliber and coated with cheese, the usual bacon flavor wonderfully supplanted by crabmeat.

Squash flan ($8.25) manages to promote the vegetable flavor over that of the rich custard, and is garnished deliciously with toasted pumpkin seeds. Cotechino sausage and lentils ($9) is a thick slice of what tastes like hot, fresh salami, on a beautifully made bed of tiny lentils that I found over-salted, marring an otherwise excellent winter appetizer.

Among the salads, I liked the "greens and reds" ($7), familiar but lovely lettuces in a perfect vinaigrette. Escarole salad ($8.25) uses the broad-leafed green kind of chicory, with pickled beets and shavings of a crumbly smoked cheese, perhaps ricotta salata. The only problem is an overly salty dressing, more notable because of high sodium levels in other appetizers and entrées. Gorgonzola salad, part of the $35 fixed-price dinner, is made with gorgeous red Treviso chicory with effective bites of green cheese, toasted hazelnuts, and slices of Macoun apple.

My favorite entrée was a special of rotisserie-roasted rack of pork ($18.95). This was two semi-boned chops, brined for juiciness (including a little more salt, of course), with complementary sides of white beans and sauerkraut with diced vegetables. The pork shank on the fixed-price dinner was a close second, a single shank almost the size of a lamb shank, braised to falling-off-the-bone tenderness, with mashed potatoes and plenty of pecorino cheese. Pork shanks are all over menus this year, adding a bit of slow-food flavor.

Also slow was the red-wine-and-cumin-braised calamari ($16.95). You cook squid for either a minute or two hours, and this is the two-hour kind: soft, with a light cumin flavor — more Catalan than Venetian, I’d say — on garlic toast with a little spinach. Monkfish with braised fennel ($18.95) is a nice chunk of fish roasted to add some crust, and the fennel is delicious and dietetic. Most of the fish entrées at La Morra lack a lot of starch, making them ideal for low-carb dieters, or for those who’re having a pasta appetizer or course. Roasted loin of cod ($18) is kind of a small chunk, but impeccably delicious, as are the underlying roast vegetables: a red pepper, a split fingerling potato, and a superb slice of roast beet. Wood-grilled tuna ($19.95) was rare at the center as ordered, sushi-quality tuna with an agrodolce (sweet-and-sour) tomato jam that was surprisingly good with this meaty chunk of fish.

The bar on the first floor suggests drinks. The La Morra ’Rita ($8.50) uses seasonal Meyer-lemon juice and triple sec to make something like a whiskey sour, only with a rim of salt. The restaurant was out of the well-known Chiarlo barbera d’Asti on the wine list, so instead offered the 2000 Villa Giada "Ajian" ($9/glass; $40/bottle), one of the fruitiest, lightest, and best reds with food I’ve ever tasted. Another suggested substitute, the 2001 Cantina del Pino Dolcetto d’Alba ($9/$40), normally a lighter wine than a barbera of the same region, was somewhat similar in style. The 2001 Feudo Arancio Merlot ($6/$24), from the top ruffle of the boot, was actually a more tannic and structured wine. Big glasses did wonders for all three. Decaf coffee ($1.75) was very good, but tea ($1.75) comes to the table as a metal pot of hot water and a choice of tea bags from Harney & Sons. Choose quickly or your tea may not brew up strong enough.

Desserts (all $8.25) are the only weak course at La Morra, and they’re only relatively so. The brunetta, a kind of crème caramel with espresso flavor and a crumb crust, is entirely delicious, and the semifreddo — two slabs of frozen hazelnut mousse — is excellent. But a Meyer-lemon tart is just thin cookies with a loose, tart lemon-custard sauce and dots of fresh kumquat. And the apple-and-pear crostada is a free-form purse tart with good spiced apples but floury-tasting pastry. The chocolate budino is just chocolate pudding with a few fresh raspberries. Split the semifreddo and have a piece of really good dark chocolate when you get home.

Service at La Morra is excellent. Servers worked hard to deal with our draft concerns, guided us through the menu, got our orders to the table well, and didn’t hustle us out despite that growing line. The décor still features lots of bare brick upstairs, and painted stone walls and big windows downstairs. The wall art — framed Italian posters for apéritifs and pastas — also reflects noise, so sound builds up both downstairs, with its open kitchen and curved bar, and upstairs, where there’s an open prep kitchen but lower ceilings.

Even so, La Morra has a rightness for the moment, as though everyone at once thought, "Enough with all this Asian fusion; how about some real Italian food?"

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com .


Issue Date: February 6 - 12, 2004
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