La Ciccia

291 30th Street at Church Street (Noe Valley)

San Francisco, CA 94131

(415) 550-8114

By Muni: J Church to 30th Street

Since I've been spending way more time in the Bay Area than in New York City recently, I've spent an inordinate amount of time on Chowhound.com. Because of my love for food and restaurants, I can spend hours and hours perusing the posts, and I've even started to post myself. But I take everything with a grain of salt, since I don't know these people, and similar to Zagat ratings and comments, I never know if I can really trust those who post and their food tastes. That said, there are some names on the San Francisco Bay Area Board that I'm beginning to trust after reading many, many of their posts, and upon one of those user's recommendations, I made a dinner reservation at La Ciccia, which he deemed one of the best new restaurants of 2006.

La Ciccia specializes in food from Sardinia, an island off the Western coast of Italy sitting in the Mediterranean Sea. I've never been to Sardinia nor Italy -- quelle horreur! -- but I imagined the possibilities to expect from La Ciccia with Sardinia's Italian and Mediterranean influences.

The restaurant is cozy with perhaps 12 rustic tables, and we were seated towards the back near the kitchen. There is a small bar where you can also sit, sip and/or dine. Most of the other tables were occupied, and with the cool breeze coming in through the front door, I was happy to be seated in the rear.

I tried to order "family-style" since a number of dishes on the menu plus the specials sounded excellent. We began with a special antipasti platter of prosciutto di Parma, prosciutto di San Danielle, housemade head cheese and pancetta. All of the meats were delightful, particularly the flavorful headcheese. My mom thought the pancetta was unbearably fatty (I ate the portion she tore off), and although successful platters like this are a dime a dozen, everything was fresh and tasty. Soon after, we received our next dish, a special white pizza with sauteed oyster and porcini mushrooms and shaved black truffles. The husband thought he'd be able to pick off the mushrooms, but since they were sauteed, the juices melded with the cheese and seeped into the perfectly chewy yet crisp crust. It was an amazing combination, although I felt that the black truffles were slightly subdued.

We followed these with a pasta course, housemade tagliatelle with crab, which we shared. This dish was memorable. Delicious, sweet chunks of fresh Dungeness crab in a slightly spicy tomato sauce enveloped each chewy noodle... this was exactly what I had imagined, but better.

Our main courses included a whole dorade baked with salt, pepper and fish stock and a ravioli special stuffed with butternut squash and orange zest. The orange zest threw us off a touch, since the flavor hit as you swallowed each bite, and I think it overpowered the delicate flavor of each ravioli. The delicate dorade was perfectly cooked and absolutely excellent. My mom had never had dorade before, and she was amazed at the light flavor of this local Mediterranean fish.

We finished with dessert, a poached apple dish with vanilla gelato both of which were heavy on spice particularly clove (my husband actually felt like he was "eating a clove cigarette"). However, we certainly did not let the less-than-successful dessert bring down our elation on the overly successful dinner. Additionally, the service was prompt and more homey than formal. The waitstaff were more like friends who made excellent suggestions and brought what you needed without being stiff.

I know it'll be hard to get back here since a) I don't live in San Francisco (yet), and b) there are so many amazing restaurants in the area, but my goal is to try La Ciccia again at least once a season to truly get the local, seasonal flavors in excellent, well-priced dishes.