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| - I've been here many times over the last few years, sometimes with family, other times with friends, and occasionally with a work-related guest. It's always been good, sometimes bordering on very good. Thursday night it was great. Flawless really.
The evening started well, when I ducked in out of the rain, a bit early, and settled down to wait for a friend who had booked our table. Immediately I was greeted and made to feel at home, and offered a glass of wine -- I chose Il Nero from the "enoteca" by the glass list -- a great blend of negroamaro and cabernet sauvignon from Pugiia. Getting to speak in Italian to the charming waiter, who was from Capri (are people really FROM Capri? I guess so), helped set the mood. It was relatively early, and the large dining room was starting to fill up. Good people watching, but even ore fun to watch the wait staff getting their instructions for the evening from Chef Gentile, and gazing at the various stations in the open kitchen.
Soon after my friend arrived (and tucked into his glass of the Nero), we opted to go for the spring tasting menu, a menu innovation I had not noticed on past visits. This proved to be a smart choice -- good value, yes at $75, but a fantastic way for Gentile to show off his take on exciting Italian regionalism. As we sipped our wine, we were treated to three stuzzichini, single bite morsels that came out in a perfect pace from the kitchen: lemon ricotta on a parmesan crisp, a fried gnocchi with cheese, and a baked flax seed racker with a speck of savoury topping. We changed wine, opting on the waiter's advise for a very unusual white -- a ribbola gialla from Friuli -- a dry very flavourful wine with an almost orange hue. This was a splendid accompaniment for the next course, a "pesto di Modena," which turned out to be delightful dollops of whipped wild boar lardo, spiced marcona almond, with bits of okanagan peach and pembina berry. The fruit both cutting the richness of the lardo and playing beautifully of the wine we were drinking. Happily, we each had a quarter glass of the ribbola left when the burrata arrived, house-made and served with olive oil and, in an inspired touch, a small piece of cured sardine whose saltiness and pickle was a great contarst to the creaminess of the cheese.
Knowing that the next course was a platter of salumi, we moved back to red wine, both of us knowing with consultation that we needed to get back the Nero to fully enjoy the cured meats (which also came with a lamb's brain saltimbocca and a sizeable pile of crispy pig's ears. I had seen the brains on the menu before, and kicked myself for not having ordered them in the last -- this is a dish worth stopping in for on its own. pancetta wrapped around creamy brain, a divine contrast of salt, porcine taste, creamy brain, and to follow it with a mouthful of the Nero truly perfect. Among the salumi selections the soprasotta stood out, as did the fennel salami. Buca makes them all on premises, and the meats are exceptional.
The next dish was an old favourite, one that I have ordered on most of my past visits, so it was nice meeting an old familiar friend -- Spaghetti al Nero di Miale -- something close to this restaurant's signature dish. It's a small, but at this point in the meal perfectly-sized, pile of hand-cut pork blood pasta, n'duja sausage (a Calabrian specialty), wild ramps (not always included but a seasonal nod) and smoked burrata cheese. Spicy and beautifully textured, and paving the way for the final substantive course, and the main one: Angello Arosto. A few slice of roasted featherstone lamb loin with a ragu bianco, a small amount of sheep's milk ricotta with churned honey, and roasted king oyster mushrooms. The lamb here handled with consummate skill by the kitchen.
We rounded out our meal with a dolcetto - this may change evening to evening but for us it was a shot glass with a moscato and a citrus foam, and I may have detected a few grains of bee pollen atop, but this is a guess as the menu card was silent on this score. This was followed by a Florentine classic, a zuccotto, a dome of striped cake with favours of gianduia, chocolate, and frangelico topped with a bit of cream.
A perfect evening. Hats off to Chef Gentile and his crew. Five starts easily (the first time I've felt so moved in my ranking). As I said to my friend when we were finishing, if Michelin started awarding stars in Canada, here in Toronto Buca certainly gets one.
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