In a town rich with Italian food, Parma Cucina stands out

In the greater San Diego space, you could check out three unique Italian restaurants each 7 days for a calendar year and still not test them all. A lot more like five a week if you incorporate pizza counters. And that wouldn’t involve all the up to date dining places and steakhouses that characteristic pasta menus. It is more than enough to make you ponder how we ever have time for Taco Tuesday.

In any case, which is my justification for being late to the celebration with regard to Parma Cucina Italiana. The charming tiny Hillcrest restaurant has been hectic successful above faithful customers for the better component of a decade, and I’m sure all of them have been recommending it to pals the total time. Definitely, I would have have caught on faster, had I not been distracted by the annual onslaught of new Italian places to eat that seem to open every yr.

As with so many a lot more the latest arrivals, indigenous Italians are powering the menu and atmosphere at Parma Cucina, location a tone both welcoming and authentic to northern Italy. I’m inclined to imagine a absence of hype or pretension has one thing to do with the cheerful and steadily increasing crowd that filled its dining area (and parklet seating) on a recent Saturday evening. But, for every normal, credit score should be supplied to the stellar simplicity of the food.

We began with a salmon carpaccio starter that featured so significantly fish for $17, I fearful it would derail our appetites. As an alternative, my spouse and I both equally went on to devour our pasta entrees, and adhere to them up with dessert: one of the a lot more enjoyable illustrations of tiramisu I have attempted. Even the accompanying espresso shot tasted perfect.

In spite of the form of tried using-and-legitimate simplicity we encountered — the menu highlights dishes this sort of as lasagna ($24), pesto with shrimp scampi ($23), and gnocchi with four cheese sauce ($23) — my key study course choice did give me a possibility to test something for the initial time. That would be the stuffed pasta shape, fagottini, made to resemble the kind of candy wrapper with a single twist at the prime (commonly located with challenging candies). Here, the homemade pasta is stuffed with a combine of ricotta cheese and truffle, lined in a product sauce that includes far more truffle, as effectively as porcini mushrooms ($25). If you uncover any dish with a further umami profile, please convey to me about it.

As a husband, I was specially appreciative for a dish I didn’t try. My wife’s beloved Italian order is linguini frutti di mare, in other text shellfish pasta. I have invested the improved part of a yr taking her about to Italian dining establishments, in research of a good just one, but it’s primarily led to disappointment — specially thinking of I get compensated to suggest dining establishments.

At last, in this article was Parma Cucina, with a on a regular basis offered particular, which lays shrimp, mussels, and clams with white wine and tomato sauce, more than your selection of linguini or risotto. Not only is it just one of the restaurant’s far more visually stimulating dishes, it earned me bonus details for scheduling a intimate night time out.

That reported, when I do it all over again, it will be on Tuesday. Which is owing to an ongoing particular that rates a a few-training course meal for two at $56. Now that I’m ultimately acquainted with the pleasurable night out provided by Parma Cucina Italiana, I may well have to go away Taco Tuesdays to the one folks.