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Sorriso Italian Trattoria
A Leather District trattoria to be happy about
BY ROBERT NADEAU
Sorriso Italian Trattoria
(617) 259-1560
107 South Street, Boston
Open Mon–Thu, 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–10 p.m.; Fri, 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–10:30 p.m.; Sat, 5–10:30 p.m.; and Sun, 5–10 p.m.
AE, DC, Di, MC, Vi
Full bar
Valet parking after 6 p.m.
Up five steps from sidewalk level

Sorriso’s parent, Les Zygomates, has always had somewhat unusual food (French), an offbeat wine list, and a fashionable atmosphere. By trying to do the same general thing in the key of Italian, the owners have ended up with rather more typical (but very good) food, a shorter wine list (but again quite good), and an atmosphere that hasn’t really caught fire. Sorriso comes off as a lesser (but cheaper, and, you know, good) version of Les Zygomates. So let’s pretend we’ve never been to Les Zygomates, and we’ve discovered this good, new, not overly expensive trattoria in the Leather District. We’re pretty happy about it.

Our happiness begins with the breadbasket, actually a cone as at Saint, but full of Italian bread that goes beautifully with the fruity extra-virgin olive oil in bottles on every table. Since we see the flames of an open oven, it’s hard to resist one of the four brick-oven pizzas as an appetizer for the table; we have white clam and garlic ($13). The thin-crust pie is nicely crisp on the bottom, with a handsome color pattern of white clam meat, white garlic, and white cheese on white crust. It tastes very good, with the garlic much mellowed by the roasting.

Or we could reach into a group of very small plates called " For the table " and have some white-bean-and-roasted-garlic purée ($6). It’s again more rich than sharp, and was very good on our bread. For conventional appetizers, the carpaccio of portabella mushroom ($7), with arugula and shaved grana (cheese), is a superior salad with thin slices of mushroom to make a kind of meaty layer beneath. For real meat, the speck, grissini, pear, and Gorgonzola ($9) provides three prosciutto-thin sheets of intensely flavored speck, which is a cured, un-smoked meaty bacon. The pear is Bosc and close to ripe, the grissini are crunchy cheese twists, and the whole is exactly what an appetizer should be: stimulating but not too filling.

Fried calamari ($8) comes to the table hot, a little greasy, fresh-tasting, with some breadcrumbs and a dipping sauce of clean-tasting marinara. A bowl of baked octopus ($9) was well cooked and tender, with a strong flavor of the sea. It came in a tomato sauce, with some pine nuts for contrast — good, funky peasant food.

Main dishes aren’t huge — and aren’t as expensive as huge ones of this quality. My personal favorite was a pan-seared skate wing on borlotti beans ($18). The skate is sautéed meunière (floured and pan-fried). It’s a single long fillet, very pretty, on a few sautéed greens. The beans — the Italian improvement on cranberry beans — are large, fat, pink, and almost fully cooked, in a sweet-sour sauce, perhaps balsamic vinegar, that I found rather addictive. I also loved another casserole, this time of polenta topped with oxtail ragout ($20). The blending of two rich, full flavors made every spoonful a treat.

Pasta dishes were more mixed. Ravioli of greens in walnut sauce ($14) had good bite to the pasta; the greens had some texture as well, not to mention beautiful color contrast on another white dish. The walnut sauce was about as rich as I can actually eat, and it wasn’t finished at the table, but this was a fine dish. Pappardelle with Bolognese sauce ($15) looked Italian, with just a little sauce and meat clinging to the wide ribbons of pasta. It was a large portion (half brought home), but the pasta was cooked to fully soft. Close to greatness, but just short.

Wines are all Italian, with a white and a red from most provinces. Anticipating a trip to the south, we had the 2002 Feudi di San Gregorio rubrato ($38), from Campania. It offers a strong expression of the dark-berry fruit, really more vinous than berry, of the ancient aglianico grape. Coffee and decaf ($2.75) are excellent; tea ($2.75) is a bag to put into a metal pot of hot water — it brewed for us. Decaf espresso ($3) was not an oxymoron; it was bitter and bracing.

Desserts are quite good, especially a warm chocolate bread pudding ($6) that’s more like a cylinder of pudding cake, with a scoop of very thick whipped cream. I also liked the panna cotta and fruit compote ($6), the fruit being black raspberries and such. The gelato and biscotto ($5) feature both sweet cream and chocolate gelato of great richness, and a small, hard chocolate biscuit for contrast. A crostada of warm apples ($6) with mascarpone ice cream (maybe that was the sweet-cream gelato) was likewise delicious, with hints of marzipan under the apple slices, and a rich pastry " crust " under it all.

Early on a weekday evening, we got little sense of atmosphere. The bar slowly filled, and presumably some of those people will linger for food, with good results. The long rooms seem more open than at the last restaurant in this space. The visible ductwork is still here, but there are now large lamps in baskets of twigs, along with fans, a vintage mural that didn’t quite reach the level of camp, and wonderful pebble work on the bathroom walls. The bathrooms (three, all unisex) have all the latest design fads; if you haven’t seen the new vessel sinks, take a peek.

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


Issue Date: April 15 - 21, 2005
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