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| - Budda boom Budda bing. Tommaso's TRATORIA is oddly situated in one of those funny little six store strip malls on Eastern Avenue just west of Carlaw. My initial impression was that this basically was just a place you went to grab up one of those honking big veal "sang-wiches" and half expected to see Tony Soprano sitting in the corner slurping up some Espresso (or as you mangia cakes would call it... Expresso). Some Italian friends of mine encouraged me to go and at least check it out since they know how much I love true to form Italian food.
So last evening myself and my daughter (fellow Yelper) Meg hauled ass down for some rustic, down to earth Italian eating. We started with the house antipasto plate which came on two plates. Tommaso slices the prosciutto himself on order. The plates came piled with prosciutto, two kinds of cheese, chicory, rapini, olives, green beans, fagioli a hunk of really fresh bread and odd addition of what appeared to be small square sandwiches with rapini and sausages in them. (see the pics!) For posterity we chugged back a bottle of nice cold sparkling Prosecco. It was in our opinion not a fancy antipasto plate but very true to rustic Italian cuisine.
The waitress brought out a plate of fresh Chanterelles to let us know that this is what was part of the specials for the day and that Tommaso was cooking up the 'shrooms. We ended up having a couple of plates of pasta with his house sausage and eggplant stirred in to and for the most part I'm not a big fan of the "saus-eeeege" but these were delicious. The pasta was delicious but just a tad too al-dente for my taste buds. I prefer my pasta cooked a little bit softer. Tommaso told us he makes about 150 lbs. of sausage a week. Somehow or another we ended up with a bag of fresh sausages to go.
Tomasso just kept sending out little samples from the kitchen including another type of pasta that had the mushrooms stirred in to it. I really liked this pasta even more. We didn't get to the vitello (the veal) because at that point I just couldn't get any more food in. Tomasso sat down with us, brought out some sort of herb liqueur and had the waitress bring us the house biscotti. They were large with bits of dried fruit and orange in them. Very traditional and very delicious. He told us that that bulk of his business is lunch time from the film studios along Eastern & Lakeshore Avenues. I certainly could understand why as all his food is truly authentic and has a real home made edge to it.
From an ambiance perspective Tommaso's is so so because of the steam tables and the Pepsi cooler but the room is quite large, very clean and has fresh linens on the table. This is not a Splendido but then again nor is the price tag. The menu offers very basics....pizza, veal, pasta, antipasti. It is home cooking and comfort at its best.
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