La Quercia – Second Visit

Last weekend I happened to be up in Vancouver for a quick visit and had a yen for some Italian food. So we instantly though of La Quercia (www.laquercia.ca/index.html), but when we called (at about 8 pm on Saturday), they were all booked up for the evening. Undaunted, we decided to try again the next day, and managed to get a table for 8:30.

Our table was ready and waiting for us when we arrived. (We were actually given a choice of tables. Hint: Sunday evenings look like a good time to go to La Quercia.) Water and bread arrived very quickly, which was good, because it gave us something to eat while facing the difficult task of deciding what to eat. Although the menu is diminutive, there are often numerous specials, and everything sounds delicious, making deciding more difficult than one might imagine given so few choices.

In the end, Chris went with one of the specials as a starter and, remembering our first visit (http://bcfoodandwineadventures.blogspot.com/2008/08/la-quercia-restaurant.html), a small dish of one of the pasta specials as his main. I ordered a very rich special as my main, and hence wanted something light and fresh to start. There wasn’t anything fitting that description on the menu, so I asked our server if it would be possible to get a simple salad as a starter. He was happy to accommodate my request, and quickly said yes. He returned a short time later to say that, unfortunately, they could not do a green salad, but would be happy to make some sort of seasonal vegetable salad instead, which was perfectly fine with me. Along with this news, he brought a wine for Chris to sample. I wasn’t drinking, so Chris was having wine by the glass. The server suggested a red wine to go with his meal, but had something else not usually available by the glass that he thought might work well, and so offered Chris a taste. It was indeed a good wine for the food, and if I could remember what it was we might have it again. But unfortunately, I wasn’t paying much attention. I do remember that it was northern Italian.

Our starters arrived shortly thereafter. Mine was a mélange of cut green beans, asparagus, small radishes, and shaved fennel with a light vinaigrette. It was perfect. The vegetables were crisp and the vinaigrette was light. Chris had a special that was highly recommended by the server – very thin slices of veal tongue with a red wine reduction served alongside shaved white onions. Neither of us had ever eaten tongue before, but we like to try new things and so we took our server’s recommendation. (Speaking of which, I loved my recent first taste of sweetbreads at Restaurant Tallent in Bloomington, IN, www.restauranttallent.com/index.html. I highly recommend them, and the restaurant.) We were very glad we did. It was incredibly flavorful. The onion was the perfect (and necessary) foil for the richness of the meat and sauce. The texture was remarkable, tender, yet toothsome. (It was so good I am inspired to try cooking tongue at home, an experiment Chris is heartily behind.)

Mains: Chris’s Tagliatelle Bolognese was as wonderful as we remembered. The fresh pasta was perfectly cooked, kissed with just the right amount of their fabulously rich Bolognese sauce. The portion looked small (it was the appetizer size after all), but it was more than enough. It’s a filling dish. Moreover, I had anticipated that I would need some help finishing mine, and was not wrong about this. I had ordered the veal involtini special - veal scaloppine stuffed with taleggio and proscuitto. It was served with a reduction including a little marsala, some crispy roasted potatoes, chard stem bits, and some thinly sliced quickly sautéed zucchini. All in all it was pretty tasty. I found the potatoes a little too salty, and the meat a little undercooked. (The innermost veal in the roll was barely warm. But the outside was perfectly cooked, meaning that a longer cooking time to accommodate the internal meat would have produced a leathery outer layer of veal, which would have been worse. So I just dealt with it.) On the plus side, the flavors of everything on the plate were great. I have to come clean, I don’t like zucchini. I usually find it bitter. (Strange, given how much I love bitter greens.) But this was not at all bitter, and I enjoyed the few bites of zucchini I had. (Chris pretty much takes it for granted that he gets my zucchini.) I had expected that I would taste the components of the involtini, but this was not the case. The veal, cheese, and ham flavors all melded beautifully. I would definitely order this dish again.

By this point in time, Chris had moved on to another wine. I believe it was the Tenuta del Portal 2005 Aglianico. Much fruitier than the first wine. His assessment was that the second wine was better for drinking, the first was a better accompaniment to the food.

We finished off with a lambrusco-poached pear, stuffed with lemon mascarpone. I believe they used a sweeter lambrusco for poaching, but added little sugar to the poaching liquid, so it was not cloyingly sweet. (For those whose lambrusco experience begins and ends with Ruinite, lambruscos can be incredibly crisp and dry.) And given the lower alcohol content of lambruscos (compared to regular red wine) there was little leftover alcohol flavor. Just the fruitiness of the wine and subtle flavors of warm spices and lemon.

Once again, we left happy, and will return. Next time, however, we might try the tasting menu. I can’t find any mention of it anywhere. But the table next to us was having it, and it looked spectacular. So I’d suggest asking about it when you phone and make reservations. We will.

4 thumbs.