EATING Out
A new, riverside Italian restaurant looks like living up to its name
BRIAN KENT
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| The classy Brio has a lively spirit and a touch of brilliance. |
'Another new Italian restaurant?" Don't say it in that blase tone: this one is different, starting with the name: Brio - short, easy to say in any language and easy to remember. More importantly, though, as a description it's right on the button.
The new Italian restaurant at Bangkok Marriott Resort & Spa has a lively spirit and a touch of brilliance, and that, more or less, is what Brio means. In Italian, the language of classical music, when a composer wanted a particular passage to be played with dash and spirit, he marked it 'con brio.'
Approaching Brio from the hotel's riverside pier on a wet Wednesday night through the dripping trees around the pool, its gleaming windows promised a warm welcome. So bright was it and so packed with contents that the interior was puzzling at first; so much seemed to be going on and I tried to hold on to salient points in my notes as we were conducted to our table.
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| Tartar of tuna with extra virgin olive oil and shallots. |
Italian favourite sweet, pannacotta. |
A big, very big pizza oven like a shiny tower with its own bar around it; a double height ceiling with a staircase leading up to a painting of closely packed houses that recalled the narrow street leading up the hill to the old part of town; solid, square columns built of dry stone slabs; partitions in the form of glass or dark wood display shelves; a big, black chandelier like a giant spider in a web, and, high up on the walls, hundreds of pictures, prints and posters too far away to see clearly but all saying: "Italy, Food and Wine."
Prompt, smiling service was notable as we took our places and studied the very large menu, and one of the first attractions was the fact that there were many dishes unknown to us, just as the wine list featured wines from many regions of Italy with excitingly unfamiliar names. Incidentally, Brio also offers 20 kinds of mineral water from different regions of Italy.
There were some indispensable old favourites on the menu, too, and this is how we began, with caprese salad of tomato and buffalo mozzarella (340 baht) and tartar of tuna with extra virgin olive oil and shallots (420 baht). For good measure we added one of chef Antonio Facchinetti's signature dishes, octopus carpaccio with green bean salad (390 baht).
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| Strozzapreti amatriciana, pasta with onion, tomato, pancetta with pecorino cheese. |
Mascarpone cheese, sun dried tomato, bell peppers, parmesan, pinenuts and arugula. |
The caprese salad presented Italy's national colours with sweet, red Italian tomatoes, gleaming white cheese from Italian buffaloes and fresh green basil. Sprinkled with oregano, the flavour of the mozzarella had a similar effect to a classic white wine: it was quite full and creamy and yet dry. Creamy came to mind again in the refined texture of the tuna carpaccio, with a little tasty crunch added by a small cluster of celery julienne.
The carpaccio of octopus, the meat had been marinated in lemon, oil and black pepper, then rolled in a cloth, squeezed and finely sliced into small, thin disks. All the flavours were clearly defined but not pushy, and this was the key to all the dishes we tried - with one exception, our first pasta dish, strozzapreti amatriciana (340 baht).
Strozzapreti are short strips of hand-made pasta and each one has a twist in it. The name actually means 'priest strangler.' Amatriciana is rich, red, tasty and spicy, a basic mix of onion, tomatoes, pancetta and pecorino cheese with some ground chilli.
We had not neglected wine, and found a good selection from G4 Wines, some of them by the glass. Most of these we were at 250 baht and 1,400 baht the bottle. The one I fancied, however, was Dona Marzia Primitivo 2005 (300 baht a glass/1,600 baht a bottle), a rich, deep ruby red whose generous fruit flavours were modified by pleasant acidity and tannins.
More delicate flavours came with a second pasta dish, ravioli of spinach and ricotta cheese (360 baht). The spinach-stuffed ravioli with parmesan cheese was in a fragrant sage butter sauce with a scattering of young, fresh sage leaves.
Main courses are few in number - five fish and five meat - when compared to the plethora of appetisers, the two dozen pasta dishes and maybe 40 kinds of pizza. There were deep-fried prawns, calamari and fillets of sole, veal scallopine, saltimbocca alla Romana, but we were intrigued by something much less familiar, La Coppa di Maialino: Pork neck slow braised in milk with spring onions (550 baht).
This was probably a favourite with poor families at one time, as pork neck is an inexpensive cut, very fatty and really needing its five hours of slow cooking. It's lovely, though, especially on a rainy evening in the chill of air conditioning. By contrast, the more refined loin of pork lay beside it in a cream sauce flavoured with spring onions and fresh sage.
For dessert, we were urged to taste those tried and true favourites of Italian desserts, pannacotta and tiramisu (both 260 baht), as chef Antonio has his own way of making them. The glistening white pannacotta was topped with meringue and surrounded by fresh raspberries, blackberries and black currants; the classic tiramisu made with espresso, mascarpone and double cream was perfumed by marsala and Kahlua.
We left the restaurant in high spirits, which remained undampened despite the fact that it had started to rain again.
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