This is the must-try dish at Vancouver's new Italian restaurant, Folietta
Folietta
Where:
1480 Nanaimo Street, Vancouver
When:
Dinner, daily; brunch on weekends
Info:
604-253-4021 |
You should try the focaccia with fresh ricotta and black truffles, the server suggested. That really should have been a command. The plump individual focaccia, topped with bright, fresh ricotta, a showering of black truffle bits, and drizzles of olive oil is that kind of wonderful.
This was at Folietta, a newly opened Italian restaurant on Nanaimo Street. I’ve watched it take shape from across the street at To Live for Bakery and Cafe, where I break for a coffee and pastry when I’m in the area. The chef overseeing Folietta is Bobby Milheron, the uber chef for the Wentworth Hospitality Group’s expanding restaurant assets — Tableau Bar Bistro, Homer St. Cafe and Bar, Maxine’s Cafe and Bar, and now Folietta.
In this role, Milheron has stepped back from cooking but misses it. “I purposely dress a little better so it forces me to stay away from cooking,” he says. “I love being there but to be effective, I have to have eyes on everything.”
Milheron began developing the Folietta menu a couple of years ago when work started on The Grant condo building by Amacon, a development company operated by the same family that runs Wentworth. Folietta, on the ground floor, therefore, is modern with a spiffier-than-usual look for East Van thanks to the serial restaurant design team at Ste. Marie Studio. The space stretches from counter seating with a view into the kitchen, to the dining room and finally to a step-up level bar and lounge. The place was abuzz, mid-week. A semi-enclosed patio will open imminently.
The menu offers salads, antipasti, primi (pastas), secondis (mains) and contornis (side dishes). Focaccia has won a category of its own with different toppings. The one my server had recommended was tasting the soul of Italy. Next visit, I will drool over the focaccia with a mini-tasting menu of fresh mozzarella — buffalo mozzarella, burrata and crescenza.
“Folietta is all about sharing, just like in Italy,” says chef de cuisine Imtiaaz Patel. “We’ve drawn from regional traditions but added a Vancouver lens through local ingredients and seasonal creativity.” He learned a thing or two about pasta at Autostrada and Livia and has also worked at A-lister Boulevard.
Pastas are house made with a fresh nutty flavour to which sauces love to cling, just so. Lamb neck trottole con agnello (a spinning top pasta shape from Campania) was lightly sauced with the braising liquid, white wine and saffron. Tender pulled lamb and fresh peas tumbled from the curls and tunnels of the pasta and Parmigiano-Reggiano added salty umami. Bucatini al cacio e pepe pasta, had something extra going on. It was whey from the kitchen’s house-made ricotta, incorporated into a sauce with some pasta water, Parmigiano-Reggiano and peppercorn.
My favourite pasta was a seasonal spot prawn ravioli, beautifully crafted with a foamy prawn-forward sauce, made with prawn head flavour, celery, mushrooms, shallots, tomatoes, deglazed with vermouth and cooked down with cream. The fleeting prawn season done, the ravioli has switched to a doubleheader (doppio ravioli) with morel mushrooms in one half and stinging nettle filling in the other. For quality control and a quest to improve, the kitchen keeps a daily record of the amount of water used, drying time, humidity, and cook times for the pasta dishes.
Milheron’s choice to go the extra step of making ricotta in house goes back to his wedding in Italy two years ago. A nonna at the villa where he and his wife stayed showed him how to make her spinach gnudi.
“After our honeymoon, I tried making it and it turned out funny,” he says. The problem, he found, was the ricotta. “To get that texture we had to make our own. Sheep’s milk ricotta has a short shelf life and is difficult to manage, importing it,” he explains. “We end up with a beautiful whey byproduct and the lactic acid adds another dimension to the pasta sauces. It adds more layers.” That gnudi is served with brown butter, hazelnuts and sage.
Share plates included deep-fried squash blossoms filled with scallop mousse — a pivot from the oft-used ricotta filling. A nice pivot at that. While asparagus is still in season, they offer a three-way dish — raw, grilled and breaded, and deep-fried and, very nonna, served over a bed of that fresh ricotta with prosciutto cotto for a hit of salty umami, and a soft-boiled egg. It’s a lovely party in the mouth with just the sort of flavours I like to hang with.
If your table wishes to do a full Italian, then say yes to the ragu alla Napoletana — a platter loaded with pork shank braised in sugo, a traditional tomato sauce, meatballs, sausages, the bitter Italian leafy green friarieli, and rigatoni, enough to feed four. “It’s a showstopper,” says Milheron. There’s also the sumptuous bistecca Fiorentina, a 32-ounce dry-aged porterhouse with roasted garlic and salmoriglio, a close cousin to chimichurri. It also should feed four although single diners have made mincemeat of it.
Olive oil cake is my kind of ending — light, simple, and tasty. Poached rhubarb and whipped mascarpone, and a drizzle of Salt Spring Island olive oil infused with Sicilian orange completed it.
The wine program, developed by GM and sommelier Miguel Arrais, ranges the length and breadth of the Italian boot, with a smattering of BC selections to round out the list. A fun choice is a Chianti — branded with the Folietta name — that comes in the traditional one-litre “fiasco” bottle in a retro straw basket ($87).
Beverage director J-S Dupuis provides an extensive selection of Italian spirits like amari, vermouths and liqueurs as well as grappa and vino dolce. And of course, a variety of negronis, including negronis on tap ($15). The cocktail program can’t be missed either. While the main spirits range the globe — gin, mescal, pisco, rum — there’s always an Italian ingredient in the mix to bring it back home.
Side dish
The team behind Suna tea products had a brilliant idea. They sell green and black powdered teas with a boost of marine collagen (good for skin, nails, joints) and whey protein, ready to shake into a cold or hot latte. The flavours are ceremonial matcha, Earl Grey, Hojicha and “Royal Milk” with Assam black tea.
I just wonder why it’s taken so long to make black tea powder, like matcha? The nutritional value is much better than infused black tea. Holts Cafe at Vancouver’s Holt Renfrew has partnered with Suna to offer some desserts incorporating the tea powders. For more about Suna, check them out at
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Source: vancouversun.com