This review originally ran on Oct. 13 before The Cavalier Daily was aware that the author of the review, plus two members of her family, applied to work at the restaurant, La Cucina, and did not receive the position. Although the reviewer (and members of her family) applied to many restaurants during this period, The Cavalier Daily would like to apologize to the owners and staff of La Cucina. In order to prevent future conflicts of interest with reviewers, or even the perception thereof, The Cavalier Daily will create and enforce strict guidelines for future restaurant reviewers. The Cavalier Daily regrets this oversight.
Patrick Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Oct. 17, 2005
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La Cucina: oily, heavy, canned and acidic
Despite delicious desserts, most of La Cucina's Italian food disappoints due to bland and problematic dishes
By E Steers-Smith
Perhaps more than any other cuisine, Italian food is a staple of American life. The mass proliferation of Italian cooking, however, has its downside when it comes to dining out. We've become so accustomed to the convenience factor of the simple and versatile pasta dishes that our taste sensitivity for Italian foods has begun to suffer. The fact of the matter is, compared to the exotic cuisines that recently have permeated the dining scene, much of the Italian food you find in mainstream restaurants is on the blander side.
There's always hope for a good Italian restaurant, but a visit to Water Street's cute trattoria, La Cucina, is a largely disappointing experience. With its rustic stucco walls, naturalistic greenery and Christmas-light-studded patio, the restaurant has a solid ambiance.
A classic calamari appetizer -- lightly-fried squid rings with a marinara dipping sauce -- is certainly palatable, although the sauce is weak and watery and the calamari batter tastes suspiciously like Old Bay seasoning. The Funghi ripieni plate, however, is a huge disappointment: Bland mushroom caps are arrayed escargot-style on a plate and stuffed with homemade Calabrian sausage (which sounds promising but is also dry and tasteless apart from huge pieces of fennel.) The whole concoction is served coated in a thick layer of rubbery melted mozzarella, adding plenty of excessive heaviness to an already-failed dish.
Some of the best Italian dishes fuse simple but rich ingredients and are not necessarily dependent on expensive meats and seafood. La Cucina's Aglio e Olio -- a classic combination of garlic, anchovy and olive oil mixed with pasta -- is a decent option. It's relatively inexpensive and can be easily dressed up with some grated parmesan cheese. But while olive oil is an indispensable component of the dish, it shouldn't pool to the bottom of the plate like it does in this entrée.
The Agnello alle Olive is advertised as "slow-roasted roast lamb served with its own juices," which conjures up images of rich, delicious meat simmering on a spit somewhere. This lamb, however, arrives cut into delicate, homogenously-textured slices and sprinkled with some salty pitted olives. The sauce tastes more like a canned gravy than lamb jus, and a visually-attractive grilled squash and zucchini side is unpleasantly smoky and puzzlingly acidic. A pretty, pale-yellow risotto with a nice saffron flavor rounds out the dish, but its taste is unfortunately interrupted by the rice itself, which is noticeably undercooked.
Entrées are served with soup or salad, neither of which are very interesting. "Hearty" minestrone soup is, again, on the bland side; it tastes canned and the addition of soggy croutons doesn't help. The Caesar side salad is fine but generic.
After these unsatisfying appetizers and entrées, it's hard to get excited about the dessert menu. The desserts, however, prove to be far and away the best that La Cucina has to offer. The espresso crème brûlée is a knockout -- a cool rich, silky, sweet and bold flavor sealed off beneath a warm, crunchy, just-caramelized sugar crust. A generous slice of chocolate torte is also delicious: strong cocoa flavor encapsulated in a dark, airy ganache.
With its prime location and comfortable menu, La Cucina has a fair amount of customer potential. Its food, however, is disappointing almost across the board, embodying the problematic "Italian slump" of today's dining scene. While the high-quality desserts (plus some hot, crusty bread and olive oil) are an impressive surprise, La Cucina strikes out due to the overall blandness of its main dishes.
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