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| - I was to Chef Marc's Parma a couple of times and visited two of his pizza places. After all closed, I was waiting to see what would happen. Then I heard that he had opened a new trattoria in the Lakes which is fairly close to where I live.
I made a reservation and entered just before the reserved time at 5:15. I was shown to a two top table around the wall from the entrance with a view of part of the restaurant. In a short time, the waiter brought water, took my order for iced tea, and while this was going on, Chef Marc came to the table to greet me and to talk about the new place and then the specials for the night and he was talking up some of the dishes on the menu.
I ended up ordering the charred octopus to start. It's served with white beans, celery, and lemon juice. The octopus was nicely charred and the pieces were very plump and juicy. In order to try both a pasta and a main course, my server, Donny, suggested the kitchen would make me a smaller portion of pasta. I decided to get the small portion of wild mushroom ravioli with a truffle butter and parmesan cheese sauce. The server added extra grated cheese. The parmesan cream sauce was a perfect compliment to the ravioli and the smaller order was a generous portion but not enough to fill one up for the main course.
For the main, I ordered Scottish Salmon which was one of the two fish of the day selections. The salmon had a coating of red and black pepper for a spicy taste and it was cooked perfectly. Accompanying the salmon was a small amount of mashed potatoes and some glazed carrots. I didn't think anyone served glazed carrots anymore but there they were. While I would rather have had something else, they were OK and they gave a good counterpoint to the salmon's spicy topping.
For dessert, I got Italian style cheesecake and a double espresso. Both were a good finish to a pleasant meal.
Service was excellent. The staff was on everything immediately. My only problem was with the sound. The evening started with few customers and you could hear Sinatra singing. Later, as more people came, the place got very loud from peoples' talk. It just reverberated around the relatively small place. I was glad they didn't turn up the music to try to make up for the loud talking.
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