ITALIAN RESTAURANT GETS HOMEMADE UPGRADE.
“Homemade, but always trying new things.” Quinn Thompson, new executive chef at il Grillo in Carmel
Jiminy Cricket packed a lot of passion in his little grasshopper-like frame, so it’s only fitting that Il Grillo, an Italian restaurant in Carmel named “the cricket” in Italian in his honor, does the same, and more than ever before, thanks to a new executive chef.
The name pays homage to Pinocchio, and the co-owners Anna and Emanuele Bartolini’s love for Emanuele’s native Florence, Italy, where they met (and the story of Pinocchio takes place). Il Grillo’s sister restaurant, itself rather petite (and one of the harder places to get a reservation in Carmel), is named for the marine mammal who swallows Geppetto: It’s called La Balena, or “the whale.”
The dining room at adorable little Il Grillo occupies a modest roughly 400 square feet with 24 seats, plus 18 others on the patio. When the four parking spots in front of it are full, the place disappears from view. The grasshopper-size space is one reason dinner reservations are highly recommended.
Another is new executive chef Quinn Thompson, who arrived from the celebrated Sierra Mar at Post Ranch in Big Sur this May following the mudslide and bridge repairs that closed Highway 1 in the area. He strives to do everything in-house: His small crew rolls out croissant dough by hand; crafts its own headcheese; and makes great pine nut-fig mustard that makes charcuterie sing. Thompson continues to tinker with his kitchen, hoping to free up more space to cure his own meats.
“Homemade, but always trying new things,” is how Thompson describes the approach.
It makes for delicious housemade pastas. The formaggi gnocchi and Strozzapreti with beef cheek ragu are especially excellent. Ciabatta bread is baked fresh daily and served with olive oil and balsamic “caviar” beads.
Gone is the customize-your-pasta template the place started with in 2015, replaced with creative takes on Italian cuisine featuring high-grade ingredients the Bartolinis aren’t afraid to splurge on, including Piedmontese beef, the Kobe of Italian cows, and Blue Heron Farm lettuce for the fennelradish salad.
Rarely are there more than two people working in the kitchen or two in the front of the house at any given time, but the execution doesn’t suffer.
Pastry whiz Emily Garcia handles the baking and desserts for La Balena and Il Grillo. She also runs the Italianstyle pastry-and-coffee scene in the morning, crafting authentic lemon and vanilla cream-filled Italian doughnuts called bomboloni, fresh biscotti, and rotating cakes like almond raspberry and pistachio to go with brew from beans sourced with local cult favorite roasters Acme Coffee of blue-collar Seaside.
Some of Garcia’s recent inventions include a limoncello creme brulee, which balances sweet and bitter, and a luxuriously creamy almond-biscotti gelato. The first-generation Italian American echoes the overall approach — traditional Italian with an intuitive kick — when she says, “I don’t want to take away the foundation nonna gave me, but I love having fun and being creative.”
On a recent afternoon visit, I caught Thompson coaching Garcia on how to use a technical technique called reverse spherification to give her sweet treats a yolk-like membrane.
“We like things like that, that can bring a little joy,” Thompson says. “Something different. I think it’s worth the work if customers are happy.”