Tom Douglas

Cantinetta / by Robyn Wolfe, marketing

There’s nothing like a girls’ night out to celebrate a birthday! Last week our Etta’s girls’ group got together to celebrate lovely Barbie’s birthday and Cantinetta was the restaurant she chose for the special occasion.  The whole experience was delicious and amazing.  We devoured every item down to scraping the bottom of each plate! Some of our favorites were the pancetta wrapped dates that were incredibly smoky and melted in our mouths!  Roasted cauliflower with 15 year old balsamic was as delicious as I remembered it from my first visit.

Chef Brian Cartenuto’s ricotta gnocchi with lamb spezzatino and peserved tomatoes (photo left) was something we all agreed we could eat every night of the week!  The pappardelle with rabbit sugo and morels and the tagliatelle with favas, pecorino, and pancetta will definitely be on our table next time we dine there!

The five of us have never been the types to settle for sharing one little dessert, so next up was a menage a trois of chocolate desserts by Lorna Stokes, Cantinetta’s pastry chef: chocolate torrone- a nougat filled with short bread cookie pieces and almonds; the Chocolate Trio- a cake with a swirl of almond jello topped with chocolate sauce and almonds- and last but definitely not least, the budino, a heavenly Italian chocolate baked pudding!

Thanks, Barbie, for another memorable birthday dinner to add to our years of celebrations, and thanks to everyone at Cantinetta, including Aman- our incredible server who never once disciplined us even though we were obviously having too much fun and were a slight bit noisy.  Ok, those of you who know us realize we were more than noisy- but we were celebrating!!

July 7th, 2010