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Zafferano
Head East for great Italian off the beaten path
BY ROBERT NADEAU
Zafferano
(617) 561-2922
999 Saratoga Street, East Boston
Open Mon–Wed, 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 4:30--9:30 p.m.; and Thu–-Sat, 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 4:30–10 p.m.
AE, DC, Di, MC, Vi
Beer and wine
Free parking in bank parking lot on Bennington Street
Sidewalk-level access

The idea of Zafferano ("saffron" in Italian) is that immigrants from Italy can no longer afford to open restaurants in the North End, but they can in the remaining Italian parts of East Boston, which are the better areas of Orient Heights and Jeffries Point. Our protagonists, reportedly from Avellino in Campania, east of Naples, Italy, are trained in the restaurant business, and they have given us a pleasant and sometimes exciting Italian restaurant at a price level that still feels like a discovery.

The room is saffron-colored stucco, with a floor of tiles that mock stone, an elaborate ceiling, and plenty of windows — so it’s a little loud. The paradox of Zafferano may well be expressed by the basket of fluffy white bread served with a pour of exquisite extra-virgin olive oil.

Real appetizers might well start with the antipasto Zafferano ($11). This is an elevated version of the familiar platter, with a lot of excellent prosciutto, some rather ordinary cheese, good salami sliced thin, superb and garlicky grilled eggplant, grilled zucchini, a bit of caprese salad with fine buffalo mozzarella and a pink winter tomato livened up with some parmesan, good olives, and sun-dried tomatoes. So up and down, but mostly up.

For a hot appetizer, the trofeo di melanzane ($7) is more like a little mound of eggplant than a tower, but the eggplant is meltingly done and delectable, with just the right accents of tomato and broiled cheese. A plate of ravioli ($14) is homemade pasta filled with ricotta and a good lacing of nutmeg, under a clean marinara sauce.

If you want pasta as an entrée, try to get homemade. Our linguine al guscio ($15) was undistinguished pasta, but with a very good red sauce partaking of the flavors of mussels and clams in the shell. The risotto of the day was "however you like it, maybe something light, a little saffron?" ($15). In this instance, it had just enough saffron for a little color, lots of onion flavor, the perfect texture just on the chewy side of done, and a creamy body that wasn’t overpowered with cheese.

Salmone ($17) has an Italian name, but salmon is not really an Italian fish. That said, the treatment of a horseradish "crust" and a creamy mustard sauce sounded like overkill but tasted like a dream sushi. Although side vegetables are listed à la carte on the menu, every entrée came with a couple of green things, in this case buttery spinach and perfectly done asparagus.

A mixed grill ($25) had a pair of baby chops medium-rare as ordered, an Italian sausage (lean and not overly spiced), and a sort of mini strip steak, leaning more toward medium-done, but both tender and flavorful, all on a large bed of field greens in a salty dressing. A special on grilled giant shrimp ($22) had five genuinely jumbo crustaceans, nicely under-grilled, with good grilled artichoke hearts and asparagus.

If you do want side vegetables, the grilled vegetables ($5) are a remarkable platter, featuring items that haven’t been grilled in these parts since Todd English went corporate, such as radicchio and endive. There’s also fennel, more of the eggplant and zucchini, and a couple of ungrilled but split cherry tomatoes. A dash of the olive oil served with the bread is all that stands between this platter and greatness.

The wine list is almost all Italian, and does not list no-vintage years. Prices begin at around $20, so this is a very good restaurant for people who like to drink wine with Italian food. I picked a wine from the general area of Avellino, the Solopaca aglianico ($33), which turned out to be a nicely aged 2000 vintage of this rather serious ancient red variety. I’ve tasted some great aglianico wines made by Mastroberardino, the best-known vintner in the area, but this bottle from the Solopaca cooperative had all the same power, if not quite the finesse. Cappuccino ($3.50) was very good in both real and decaf.

Desserts (all $6) came from a glass case, we were told. Our waiter spun a very pleasant story about how the six or seven steps to the glass case revived the appetite, and made the desserts more healthful. Could be. All the ones we tried were on the heavy side, with the favorites being a ricotta cheesecake in an anise-biscuit crust, and a picture-perfect fruit tart with kiwi and strawberry arranged on top. The chocolate tart with cookie crust also got entirely eaten, but a strawberry tart was too much like the chocolate, and more overwhelmed by the crust.

Homemade limoncello ($5) and arancino ($5) were powerful but flavorful tastes of citrus liqueur. We split them and drove home safely.

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


Issue Date: Febraury 25 - March 3, 2005
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