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

Linguini frutti di mare, a routinely made available shellfish pasta unique at Parma Cucina Italiana

In the increased San Diego space, you could visit 3 various Italian dining places every single 7 days for a yr and nonetheless not test them all. Much more like five a 7 days if you incorporate pizza counters. And that would not contain all the up to date restaurants and steakhouses that feature pasta menus. It’s enough to make you marvel how we ever have time for Taco Tuesday.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for currently being late to the get together with regard to Parma Cucina Italiana. The charming minimal Hillcrest restaurant has been occupied winning more than loyal customers for the much better section of a decade, and I’m selected all of them have been recommending it to buddies the full time. Definitely, I would have have caught on faster, experienced I not been distracted by the annual onslaught of new Italian eating places that look to open every 12 months.

As with so a lot of more new arrivals, indigenous Italians are guiding the menu and environment at Parma Cucina, placing a tone both pleasant and genuine to northern Italy. I’m inclined to think a deficiency of buzz or pretension has a thing to do with the cheerful and steadily growing crowd that filled its eating space (and parklet seating) on a new Saturday evening. But, for every typical, credit history must be provided to the stellar simplicity of the foods.

Nearly ten yrs in Hillcrest (which much more just lately consists of parklet seating).

We began with a salmon carpaccio starter that highlighted so significantly fish for $17, I apprehensive it would derail our appetites. Alternatively, my wife and I both went on to devour our pasta entrees, and adhere to them up with dessert: just one of the extra fulfilling examples of tiramisu I have experimented with. Even the accompanying espresso shot tasted perfect.

Irrespective of the kind of experimented with-and-true simplicity we encountered — the menu highlights dishes these kinds of as lasagna ($24), pesto with shrimp scampi ($23), and gnocchi with four cheese sauce ($23) — my main course variety did give me a prospect to test anything for the very first time. That would be the stuffed pasta form, fagottini, made to resemble the sort of candy wrapper with a one twist at the top (commonly located with really hard candies). Here, the selfmade pasta is filled with a combine of ricotta cheese and truffle, lined in a cream sauce showcasing a lot more truffle, as properly as porcini mushrooms ($25). If you come across any dish with a deeper umami profile, be sure to notify me about it.

A generous part of salmon for a carpaccio appetizer

As a husband, I was significantly appreciative for a dish I didn’t consider. My wife’s favorite Italian buy is linguini frutti di mare, in other text shellfish pasta. I have invested the improved section of a yr having her all over to Italian eating places, in look for of a excellent one, but it’s generally led to disappointment — in particular thinking about I get paid to propose dining places.

A modest, perfectly attended Italian restaurant — a person of hundreds in better San Diego

Finally, right here was Parma Cucina, with a often offered special, which lays shrimp, mussels, and clams with white wine and tomato sauce, over your alternative of linguini or risotto. Not only is it a person of the restaurant’s additional visually stimulating dishes, it earned me reward factors for booking a passionate night time out.

Stuffed pasta in the form of candy in a solitary-twist wrapper, loaded with truffle and ricotta cheese, n a creamy mushroom sauce

That said, when I do it again, it will be on Tuesday. Which is owing to an ongoing specific that price ranges a three-training course meal for two at $56. Now that I’m ultimately acquainted with the pleasurable night out provided by Parma Cucina Italiana, I could have to depart Taco Tuesdays to the solitary folks.