Il Vesco Vino

Address
579 Selby Ave., St. Paul, 651-222-7000, ilvescovino.com

The Scene
This historic home, built in 1890, formerly housed The Vintage and has been remade by the Marchionda family (I Nonni, Buon Giorno Market) into a simple, casual, neighborhood Neapolitan-styled trattoria with a cozy peninsula bar, twinkling candles, old Italian poster art, and a well-fed fireplace. The wooden floors, oversized framed windows, and golden hues all contribute to the homey and accessible vibe that makes it easy to envision IVV as an everyday eatery. Cathedral Hill’s restaurant row keeps growing, and the grateful neighborhood types are smiling, sipping merrily away on red wine, chowing down on plates of salt cod fritters and bowls of pasta.

Our Take
Frank Marchionda is doing his best Horace Greeley act, pushing ever westward in search of a larger audience. At Il Vesco Vino, he and his son Mark, chef Walter Buffalo, and culinary éminence grise Filipp Caffari have struck a fine chord, channeling our inner bambino’s blood lust for red sauce while balancing it with a keen sense of just how much authenticity an audience steeped on Italian-American food will accept. The results are pretty good, and what room there is for improvement falls into the fixable category.

Salumi and cheese plates were simple and flawlessly selected; the crostini with anchovy and ricotta reminded me of Naples. Polpette (small meatballs), calzoncini (a palm-sized baked cheese turnover), grilled octopus, and steamed mussels were all superb. Small rice balls (arancini) stuffed with mozzarella ranked up there with the calamari fritti as musts. The only appetizer I regretted was the buffalo carpaccio with juniper syrup, a dish brought over from the chef’s previous stint at Nochee. Just because you can do it doesn’t make it worth doing. Pastas were all well-made, but the ziti with braised goat was a bit of a folly, ditto a poorly cooked lamb ragu. Wrong cut, too sweet.

Stuff yourself on antipasti and fritti, wash it down with a fresh, young wine, share a steak pizzaiola, and skip dessert—I hope someday the kitchen will tweak the oddly dry baba au rhum and the cloying zeppole.

The restaurant’s eager servers and reservationists were disarmingly clueless, often bordering on absurd.

In Vino Veritas
Many restaurants these days serve wine, but most have no focus or vision. Those I visit tend to order wines that fall in a predetermined price point. Worse than that, the wine in most restaurants has no congruence with the food. But at Il Vesco Vino all the wines hail from southern Italy. Mark Marchionda offers many labels for the first time in these parts and pours them by the bottle, quartino (1.5 glasses), or mezzo (2.5 glasses), making it easy for customers to pair several wines with multiple courses no matter how many people are in the party or what they are eating. Bellissimo.