I feel cheated. How can this restaurant have been in Toronto for two and a half years without me knowing, without me hoovering the supernal house-made pasta and all those sexy things they do with beans?
Calling a restaurant Romagna Mia in homage to Italy's Emilia Romagna region is like setting up shop to sell fish eggs and calling it Pearls of the Caspian. Emilia Romagna is revered as a culinary region of Italy. In the capital, Bologna, the best restaurants employ women to roll out the pasta with special long rolling pins. Not for the Bolognese the farinaceous industrialism of pasta machines. Their passion for pasta is matched only by their feelings about their Bolognese sauce, their Parmiggiano reggiano, and their sweet prosciutto cured in Parma from pigs fed on the whey from leftover Parmiggiano production.
In Bologna, eating is always about substance, never about style. I have eaten in restaurants there where the tables are naked wood, the service peremptory and the pasta pluperfect. After dinner, they bring out the grandma who rolls out the pasta, and the room erupts joyously. Yabu Pushelberg it ain't.
Eating pasta at Romagna Mia is a very Bolognese experience. In the open kitchen, oldish men labour at length on each order. Nothing is instant.
My kingdom for the strozzapreti all Romagnola, (literally "strangle the priest") which is partly rolled thin rectangles of pasta sauced with sausage and tomato sauce flecked with spinach, spiked with Parmiggiano. Partly rolling the noodles makes them "catch the sauce better," in the words of the grand dame of Emilia Romagna cooking, Marcella Hazan. Not only do these babies catch the sauce, they are divinely succulent.
Romagna Mia has a soup named after Marcella Hazan's hometown, Cesanatico, an Emilia port town with rough 'n' ready restaurants where working-class men eat better food than we pay $200 a couple for in Toronto. Homage to Cesanatico is thick soup made from dried beans, pasta and perfectly cooked shrimp, clams and squid, drizzled with olive oil, loaded with homespun flavour.
The pasta masters of Romagna fill gossamer house-made ravioli with ricotta, Swiss chard and spinach; the sauce is a throwaway line of butter perfumed with fresh sage leaves. Their hand-rolled square spaghetti comes with baby clams and green beans. Warm cannelini beans and barely cooked seafood come with mixed greens, all dressed in good oil with basil leaves. The classic sea critter, fritto misto of the Adriatic, is crisp and grease-free, served with a splendid spicy tomato sauce.
That would have been enough. But they blow us all the way away with Parmiggiano flan: Parmiggiano reggiano cheese is suspended in fragile custard topped with a little oyster mushroom stew and shavings of prosciutto. Bresaola (air-dried cured beef), significantly moister than any other of its kind in these parts, sits under arugula with shaved Parmiggiano and lemony vinaigrette. Osso buco is as good as it gets -- moist veal shanks in thick brown sauce with wild mushrooms and a credible Parmiggiano risotto.
That too would have sufficed. But then we tried the risotto nella forma con tartufo. First, the chefs make risotto properly -- flavouring it with truffle pâté and fresh black truffle. Then the waiter brings a trolley bearing a hollowed out wheel of Parmiggiano reggiano, and the pot of risotto fresh from the stove. He pours the risotto into the cheese wheel, throws in a shot of pure alcohol, sets it alight and then begins to stir the risotto and scrape and sides of the cheese wheel. It is a magical brew -- superb risotto already perfumed with truffle given a benediction of cheese and flames. Heaven!
For those looking for less exalted pleasures, the Romagna Mia pizza oven produces a panoply of superb crisp-crusted pizzas. My favourites are tartufo (with mascarpone, fresh tomatoes, bocconcini, and more truffle pâté) and Parma, which is draped in moist, sweet prosciutto.
But all is not hearts and flowers. The service ranges from merely pleasant through mediocre to appalling. One day we ask where the overcooked caribou comes from. Says our server: "I ran over it." That's a good day. The stew of salt cod with potatoes and olives atop polenta is leaden.
Another day we eat dry brown slices of lamb, and guinea fowl that's gone gamey. The grilled kebabs of shrimp and calamari taste of a grill not cleaned enough. It seems the passion here is in the pasta, and meat is to be taken with a grain of salt. How very Italian -- just like the desserts, which are, in authentic Italian style, uninspiring.
None of which nullifies the magnificence of the pasta, the splendour of the Cesanatico soup and the decadence of turning Parmiggiano reggiano into a custard.
Romagna Mia. 106 Front St. E. 416-363-8370. Accessible to people in wheelchairs. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $120.