Although it has been around for years, we first tried Tutti Matti during the pandemic, back when they had a patio. Although some dishes were more impressive than others, we thought it was worthy of a repeat visit when we had another evening in the Entertainment District.
At 5:30, the place was near empty on a Friday night, though it filled steadily over our dinner. The chef was very friendly and came over to chat about the dishes and also to recommend the wine: Fattoria di Magliano Heba, 2019, DOCG, sangiovese and syrah - cherries, chocolate, and quite light, not too tanniny.
We started off with the Finti, our favourite dish from the previous visit - eggplant ricotta meatballs with slices of melted smoked mozzarella over and a bright and tangy tomato sauce. It previously came with pizza dough, but now you order this separately and it comes with an onion crema and fried rosemary. It is still a wonderful pieces of sourdough chewiness, with a smokey crust:
The contadino soup featured rich pork neck stock, sweet cabbage, and perfectly al dente long pasta:
We also ordered again the braised brisket pappardelle - huge ribbons of pasta topped with slow-cooked and likely wine-infused beef:
A new pasta (to us) was the pizzoccheri: cabbage strips, broken up potatoes, fontina fonduta, and nutty buckwheat pasta - straightforward and excellent, unlike other pastas we’ve previously had.
Although there are more interesting options on offer, our friend wanted to go with the classic Margherita pizza - tomato, basil, fior di latte - the same great dough and the same great tomato sauce.
For dessert, the torta della nonna had a very tangy lemon curd, with pine nuts:
This went nicely with the simple yoghurt sorbet special:
