IP Restaurant Week Part 1: Sotto Sotto

Inman Park is one of my favorite areas, and the Restaurant Week they had recently gave me a perfect excuse to eat twice there in the course of 3 days. The first dinner was at Sotto Sotto, a restaurant I had been hoping to try for a long time.

The regular menu at Sotto Sotto offers an impressive options of authentic Italian dishes, and the Restaurant Week menu had a large number of these options. The restaurant had both a $25 menu and a $35 menu. It was hard enough to pick something from the $25 list, so I barely even glanced at the additional offerings. The fact that I'm not eating meat for Lent made my decision slightly harder, but I was happy with my final choice of Bietole e Ravanello, Tagliatelle ai Funghi, and Zuppa al Cioccolato.

The appetizer I selected, Bietole a Ravanello, was a refreshing salad of beets, radish and arugula. The slight citrus-y hints from the lemon balanced the processed (pickled) flavor from the beets well, and the hazelnuts added a nice crunch to the salad. Two of my friends ordered the Caesar salad and enjoyed it. Cashew had the Fave e Pecorino. It was delicious alright, but it looked really sad on her plate: a few fava beans and some cubes of cheese.

I was very satisfied with my main course as well, the mushroom tagliatelle. Let me tell you, there's a HUGE difference between fresh pasta and the dried pasta that we all buy in stores. The fresh past has a different texture and better absorbs the flavors of the sauce it's served with. In this case, every single bite had an earthy, mushroom taste even if there were no mushroom pieces in it. The sauce was cream-based, but the pasta wasn't drenched in it, so it was easy to eat. However, the portion was too large, but that turned out well for Cashew who was still hungry after her Tortelli di Michelangelo. Snooki's Tortelloni ai Carcio (tortelloni with artichokes and mascarpone) was also delicious. I wish I could have tasted the Strozzapreti alla Salsiccia and the sweet sausage ragu that it came with, but I was assured that it was great.

Finally, we all had the chocolate soup. I give the chef major props for creativity here, but I wish the soup was different in several different ways. First, it tasted like thick hot cocoa. I wish it looked more like melted chocolate than a drink. And second, the savory croutons were out of place and distracted from the sweetness of the dessert. A crouton made of some sweet bread would have been a better option. One ingredient that was perfect in the soup were the hazelnuts. You can't go wrong with chocolate and hazelnuts :)

Still, I was very happy with the meal overall, and I am starting to enjoy Italian cooking more and more.