REVIEWS

Sauce is Boss
By Elissa Altman | January 17, 2008

My favorite restaurant, hands down, lives in a tiny, otherwise nondescript alleyway in Oltrarno, that artisanally inclined quarter of Florence across the Arno from the bustling part of the city. I'm not sure what it is about it that makes it my favorite — location? food? wine? the character who owns the place and the even bigger characters who eat there? — but, in the darker days of winter, when this critic is up to her eyeballs in food that is simply OK and surroundings that are more glitz than taste, I dream of my beloved trattoria. As of last week, I don't have to dream anymore.

Glastonbury is a long way from Florence, and I doubt that I will ever see a lone, female diner having dinner in that town with her wirehaired Dachshund puppy asleep, feet up, on her lap (the way I did on my last visit to the place mentioned above; hey, it's Europe), but when the mood strikes and I want real, great — and I mean seriously, unequivocally great — Italian food, I will have to fill up the car and head out to this hamlet that seems to have become a virtual culinary mecca in our state. Generally, new restaurants hit their stride after fits and starts, but Sauce, which opened in December, has come out of the gate fast and furious. Ever judgmental, I came to the table dubious; and then I had the arancine.

First, I have to say that any restaurant menu featuring these luscious balls of supple, arborio rice that are stuffed with a bit of this and that (this is Cucina Povera at its finest) — usually cheese of some sort, and maybe a small amount of greens (or not) and then lightly pan-fried — is going to get my attention pretty quickly. They are tough to find and harder still to find made well, without overkill, and here, when three fairly massive, masterfully made arancine showed up perched in a dish of tangy/salty/sweet red sauce, I was dumbstruck, and convinced that someone's Nonna was in the kitchen, having her way, while all the crew swirled around her. Tender, delectable and sizable enough to share between two very hungry diners, Sauce's arancine set the stage for what was to be a memorable meal.

Read the rest of the article at courant.com.