La Squadra Italian fare needed more finesse
Hull sommelier’s restaurant showcases wine, sleek surroundings, middling meals
It’s always nice when a restaurant pops up out of nowhere, instead of replacing an eatery that ran its course. So it is with La Squadra, an Italian restaurant in Gatineau’s Hull sector that opened six months ago on the ground floor of a new condo building.
La Squadra is a modern, sleekly attractive place that seats more than 100 people and is flanked by a long stretch of windows. It consists of a good-sized bar area, and a larger dining space of cushy seats and hard, dark surfaces, all with eye-catching lighting and black ductwork overhead.
At the back of the room, La Squadra’s wines are proudly on display, which makes sense given that the restaurant’s owner is Benoit Desjardins, a sommelier, wine columnist at the Outaouais radio station 104.7 FM and owner of the more casual Gatineau restaurant and wine bar Pizzédelic. At La Squadra, Desjardins’ list that goes with the collection is long, and heaviest on Italian reds, although other countries are represented.
During my two dinners at La Squadra, the dishes emerging from the kitchen, overseen by chef Giuseppe Bastone, have been unadulterated or lightly tweaked Italian staples. They’ve also ranged widely in quality, and
many strike me as overpriced.
Among the appetizers we’ve tried, the properly seasoned fried calamari ($14), nicely sauced three-meat meatballs ($10) and tender, marinated and grilled octopus ($19) were well-made and enjoyable, although a bit more effort and attention to detail would have been welcome with the last dish — its white beans were mushy, and grilling the cherry tomatoes would have been a nice move.
Last week, stracciatella ($7), the classic egg drop soup, was a little clumpier than hoped for, but still very comforting. Earlier this year, an arugula-beet salad ($13) was fine, if unremarkable.
Our one pizza at La Squadra, chosen from its list of six pies, was a notable disappointment. The chewy-crusted, personalsized seafood pizza ($20), while teeming with tiny scallops, clams, mussels, shrimp and fake crab, was too soon a mushy, indistinct, béchamel-sauced mess.
Of two pastas we tried from the 13-item selection, much better was the hearty spaghetti carbonara ($21), even if its addition of cream offends purists. Gnocchi ($20) that we tried earlier this year has left the menu — no great loss, as it was gummy and bland.
Main courses were just OK or somewhat better. We wished that a lighter hand had been at work with the veal scaloppine marsala ($27), which was overwhelmed by a sharply salted sauce. Rabbit cacciatore ($28) was filling and loaded with succulent braised thigh meat, but its gravy could have been mellowed and seemed heavy on tomato paste and salt.
A big-ticket veal chop ($40) was, on its own, blessed with a fine char from the grill, nicely seasoned and definitely delicious. However, the mound of roasted red peppers, olives and capers that covered the veal was too briny and slapdash, and the pesto on the plate’s pasta was oily and small-flavoured, lacking freshness and pop.
Tiramisu ($9), made in-house and served in a cup rather than on a plate, packed most of the right flavours in something of a mishmash. We wanted the dessert to be boozier or more moist and not just simply creamy, so that the crisp ladyfingers, deployed more like a garnish, could have become absorbent.
Three cannoli ($9) came with an in-house filling that added chocolate chips and orange flavour to the usual sweet ricotta.
Service at La Squadra was friendly and attentive. That said, while appetizers were quick to arrive at our table, there were significantly longer waits for other courses.
Hull needs more really good restaurants, and La Squadra could become one of them, once its fair to middling food attains something like the sophistication of its surroundings.