Picture yourself on a snowy ski slope
Ahhh. There’s nothing like a summer lunch of steaming pasta with potatoes, cabbage and oodles of melted cheese to make you want to take a nap.
The somnolent specialty is featured on the menu of Stelvio, a new restaurant specializing in Italian alpine cooking.
Milan-based hotelier Andrea Copreni opened the restaurant May 14 to “bring mountain food to the colder climate of Toronto,” says manager Jenneen Beattie.
Stelvio is named after a scenic national park bordering Switzerland and boasts a hip mountain ibex sign. And at Stelvio as at Al Fogolar, the Friuli restaurant in Woodbridge, Italian mountain cuisine features more polenta than tomato sauce.
The Stelvio server explains the clipboard menu with the speed of a cattle auctioneer. Better to read the fanzines on each table to fill knowledge gaps.
The hearty $18.95 signature dish, pizzoccheri, is best suited to winter days on the ski slopes.
The stubby brown noodles, handmade from buckwheat flour, are stiffer than regular pasta. They are interlaced with soft potato cubes and Savoy cabbage that adds some green to the otherwise dull-looking dish. Fusing everything are bouncy strands of molten cow’s milk cheese from the Valtellina valley. Sharp powdered parmesan goes on top.
After baking it for 10 minutes in a cast-iron dish, northern Italian-trained chef Massimo Provenzano ladles on hot garlic-sage butter to crisp the top. The melted butter pools at the bottom, about two tablespoons’ worth.
Arriving as it does all gooey with cheese, the pizzoccheri evokes raclette as much as pasta. It is not what I want to eat during a city-issued heat alert. (I learn too late of the lighter buckwheat spaghetti with zucchini and mint, for $14.95 .)
Please wake me when it’s time for dinner. Stelvio, 354 Queen St. W. (at Spadina Ave.), 416-205-1001, stelviotoronto.ca. Open Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m.