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Amelia’s Trattoria
Great Italian food in the best family tradition
BY ROBERT NADEAU
Amelia’s Trattoria
(617) 868-7600
111 Harvard Street, East Cambridge
Open Mon–Fri, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. and 5:30–10 p.m.; and Sat, 5–10:30 p.m.
AE, Di, MC, Vi
Full bar
No valet parking
Ramped access

Remember how great Italian food used to taste? At Amelia’s, it still does! Part of the secret is undoubtedly the North End coziness of the room, which is small enough for everything to come to the table fresh and hot, if not always at once. But part of it, like keeping Tinkerbell alive, is belief. The restaurant’s owners, Delio Susi Sr. and his wife, Amelia, grew up in Italy, while chef Delio Susi Jr. apprenticed at a restaurant in Abruzzi, his family’s ancestral home. So when he sends out a simple dish of spaghetti alla chitarra ($15), it isn’t just like mother used to make; often the pasta was actually made by his mother, and the quality control is his experience with the same pasta in its native region.

(So what is spaghetti alla chitarra? It’s thin sheets of homemade pasta cut into square spaghetti with a wire lyre, like a giant egg slicer, a "guitar." The result has the toothsome qualities of homemade pasta in a smaller shape — the better to suit a simple tomato sauce with fresh basil and parmesan.)

Food here begins with focaccia in a peasant basket woven of twigs or vine clippings. The dip is a white-bean paste with red pepper worked in, creating a fine orange color and full flavor, and surrounded with olive oil. Don’t fill up on it, because appetizers are very good and generous, if expensive.

Scampi ($12) are six prawns with their heads on, as they might be served in Italy, in a buttery sauce with garlic and capers. Mussels di mare ($13) are plump and white at this time of year, served in an herbal-wine sauce, again not without butter. Both dishes include a large crouton that soaks up the wonderful sauce.

A salad of shaved fennel and oranges ($12) features fennel shaved so thin that it really seems like a leaf of something, beautifully dressed and contrasted with kalamata olives and shaved cheese. A salad of baby spinach ($9), garnished with pancetta cubes, goat cheese, and shallots, is made great by another fine dressing.

My favorite entrée was an enormous veal chop ($27) mounted on a wild-mushroom risotto full of the woodsy smell and rich flavor of porcini. The fish of the day on our visit was Atlantic salmon ($23), served grilled on a bed of sautéed shaved fennel with carrots and onions and a pesto sauce. You wouldn’t think to combine salmon and pesto, but this was quite successful, the only problem being too much salt. (This is one of those restaurants that does not put salt on the table, although it does grace each table with a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil.)

"Pan-roasted free-range Statler chicken studded with rosemary, grilled seasonal vegetables, and bistro potatoes" ($16) sounds like a lot to cook and eat. Fortunately, however, Statler here refers to a cut of breast with wing bone, and everything else is a platform of the grilled vegetables and the cubed, garlicky potatoes, which get more out of the rosemary than the chicken does, although the chicken was nicely moist.

The wine list is mostly from California and Italy, but full of new things, even at the by-the-glass level. For example, the 2002 Saint-Bris sauvignon blanc, from Jean-Marc Brocard ($8/glass; $32/bottle), is the first sauvignon blanc from Burgundy I’ve ever tasted, and one that can legally be described as white Burgundy (usually a chardonnay, while sauvignon blanc is more associated with Bordeaux and Loire whites). Trivia aside, it’s a nice, sharp, Sancerre-like sauvignon blanc from a commune near Chablis, and has the useful tartness of a midrange Chablis with the more herbal nose of the sauvignon. I’ll be watching for more Saint-Bris. A 2001 Buccellato syrah ($8/$32) is likewise the first syrah of my experience grown in Sicily, as this is a Northern Rhône grape by the book. It’s already soft enough to drink, but might need another year to open up more aroma. The Leaping Lizard merlot ($8/$32) was really excellent, with a long flavor and aftertaste full of fruit with some anise, although both reds were served too warm and in glasses too small for the generous pours. (The white was too cold, which you can wait out.) Coffee ($1.50), decaf ($1.50), and cappuccino ($3.75) were all good, although they were served after the desserts.

Of the desserts, I was quite impressed by the tiramisu ($6), and I thought I had tasted them all — in fact, tasted them all several times by now. But somehow, Susi has come up with one a little denser and tastier than most, while true to the sponge-cake/espresso/liqueur tradition. Amelia’s also does quite a job with rustic apple pie ($9), which comes in a most un-rustic puff-pastry crust, with good tart apples baked in, and rich vanilla ice cream.

On the other hand, peach sorbet ($6) is a generous three scoops, without much peach flavor to any of them. It’s April, which means peaches all over the world have been stored for at least a few months. A chocolate-espresso martini ($9) is neither fish nor fowl — which makes sense — but it isn’t a martini (a dry, strong drink), an espresso (a strong coffee), or even terribly chocolate-y. It’s kind of a watery waste of Stoli in a martini glass, already the most abused piece of stemware in Boston.

Service at Amelia’s was very good, and quickly fixed when it wasn’t (a disappeared fork, the slow coffees). It’s too small a room to lose eye contact with servers, and ours was pleasant and lively to begin with. The room has the lightness and modernity of a trattoria, with café windows, curtains to dampen the sound, accents of ochre and bare brick, tan paper on the white-linen tablecloths, a brown ceiling, and a little bar. It’s good enough to plan an evening around, and just superb for a late bite after a movie at the nearby Kendall Square Cinema. Make that an Italian movie, and it’ll be an evening you want never to end.

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


Issue Date: April 30 - May 6, 2004
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