DECEMBER 2008

A Taste of Italy
Can authentic Italian food be found on the Eastern Shore? Our food critic visits Stevensville’s Rustico to find out.

By Mary K. Zajac
Photography by Scott Suchman

401 Love Point Road, Stevensville, Md.
410-643-9444, http://www.rusticoonline.com
Hours: Dining Room, Lunch 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Dinner 4 p.m.-10 p.m.; Wine Bar, Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-midnight, Sun. noon-10 p.m.

Atmosphere: Comfortably sophisticated
Service: All pro
Don’t Miss: Tortellini alla Romana; seafood fra diavola
Tariff: Appetizers, $6-$11; entrees,
$14-$26; four-course prix fixe, $35/person

In Italy, roosters symbolize good luck and good fortune. It’s the result, tradition tells us, of an instance in which a cock crowing foiled an assassination attempt made upon the de Medici family in Renaissance Florence. So when my husband and I twice heard a rooster crow as we walked from Rustico’s pebbled parking lot to its front entrance, we took this as an auspicious sign. And the rooster didn’t let us down.

From restaurant partner Gino Romano’s front-door greeting to the pumpkin-orange and butternut-squash-yellow that appear on tablecloths, walls, and china, Rustico exudes warmth and easy comfort. We overheard one diner exclaim “understated elegance!” as she brushed past taffeta drapes into the smaller of Rustico’s two dining rooms. The presence of casually dressed families in the larger dining room and solo diners in the wine bar, suggest that Rustico can be what you want it to be—be it fine or family dining or simply your favorite watering hole.

The menu has everything to do with this, of course. Diners who frequent Annapolis’s Luna Blu (owned by Rustico’s other two partners, Ivano and Michelina Scotto) will recognize Rustico’s menu as nearly identical. As Romano says, “It worked there [in Annapolis]. Why not here?”

Why not, indeed. Like at Luna Blu, the voluminous menu lists ten appetizers, roughly a half- dozen salads, eleven pastas, and eleven entrees featuring seafood, chicken, or veal. And you can sample much of the above (or at least an appetizer, salad, main course, and dessert) in the four- course prix fixe ($35).

Normally, I preach quality over quantity, but in this case, you have both. Just make sure to bring an appetite, and even then, count on taking home leftovers. Nearly everyone does, admits Romano, and we were no exception. (I do wonder, however, if the restaurant might consider a three-course special with the option of either an appetizer or a salad and trim the price accordingly.)

Though I was tempted by frittura di pomodori verdi (fried green tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella), my meal began with vegetali misti, a generous serving of grilled and marinated vegetables. (I did have three more courses to consume.) While this dish might be dull in other hands, the vegetables shone in their simplicity. The marinade clinging to the artichoke hearts flashed a bit of heat, and thin slices of grilled zucchini and eggplant were a hearty foil to silky strips of red pepper. Tomatoes in the mozzarella and eggplant Napoleon could have been riper, but the almost marshmallow-like creaminess of the mozzarella di bufula created the equivalent of a savory s’more. After those dishes, salads, as respectable as they were, seemed unnecessary.

Entrees reward diners who pace themselves. Tortellini alla Romana, tri-color tortellini with sausage and mushrooms in a cream sauce, is like the best sausage gravy you’ve ever had. And, yes, I mean that as a compliment. Neither unctuous nor greasy (but yes, rich), the spicy sausage marries with the cream in a balanced amalgam, and on a cool evening, it was hearty, not heavy. Seafood fra diavola appears regularly on the menus of Italian restaurants, but its execution is often something of a mixed bag. Not at Rustico. The mix of seafood imbued the red sauce with layers of flavor, so that the whole dish tasted fresh, a little briny, and spicy, and calamari, scallops, clams, and mussels yielded tenderly to fork and jaws.

After all that, the idea of dessert seems preferable to the thing itself, but Rustico offers a number of house-made desserts worth trying. Some are more traditionally Italian than others, and we skipped chocolate mousse and cheesecake in favor of a frothy zabaglione and the warm strudel de mele, apples in crisp puff pastry dressed in caramel sauce and ice cream, generous enough for two.

Tables at Rustico aren’t uncomfortably close together, but throughout the evening I overheard praise for service coming from various corners of the room (“He was great,” said a woman whose family celebrated a birthday, of the server taking care of them. “He was there when you needed him.”) I couldn’t agree more. Our server graciously let us set our own pace during dinner, explaining that it’s the restaurant’s policy not to bring out the next course until a diner has finished with the current one. She also inquired when we wanted our bottle of wine brought to the table, and kept our leftovers in the restaurant’s kitchen until we finished our meal. This was service that was deft and polished but without pretension.

If you’re eating in the dining room, it’s easy to forget that Rustico is a wine bar until you see the breadth and depth of the wine list, particularly where Italy is concerned. (There aren’t too many places where you’ll see Falanghina, a white from Campania, offered by the glass). On Mondays and Wednesdays, all wines over $30 a bottle are half price, but there are plenty of bottle choices in the under-$30 range as well, and Maryland law allows you to take home what you don’t consume at the restaurant. If you order a bottle and the prix fixe, you may not have to worry about tomorrow’s wining and dining either. Cock-a-doodle-doo.

Mary K. Zajac writes from Baltimore.