Jump to content

Osteria da Nino, Italian at 2900 Quincy Street in Shirlington Village


Recommended Posts

Rarely have I been this impressed by a new restaurant.  My favorites were the fritto misto, fried oysters (daily special),  and the squid-ink pasta with seafood.  The seafood was fresh, fresh, fresh!  My seafood pasta dish was uniquely flavored - I think olives were involved.  We also had the pasta with pork sausage and caprese with fruit.  Those were good but not great.   Good variety of red wine in a wide range of prices.  Service was friendly but not very efficient.  My fried oysters were sitting at the kitchen counter too long so by the time it was served to me, they were cold.  After complaining, they were replaced by a fresh, hot batch and the taste and freshness was stunning.  The wait for food was also long.  However, it is a new restaurant and the food is great, so I will cut them some slack because the food is so darn delicious.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Osteria da Nino, not Samuel Beckett's Tavern, is the best restaurant in Shirlington.

First, let me add that I went back to Samuel Beckett's Tavern for a late supper the other evening, and only the bar menu was available. Starting off with a New Belgium Shift Lager, a respectable session beer that's as good as anything I've found at Samuel Beckett's, I went straight for the 800-pound gorilla that I've always avoided ordering here: Sam's Lamb Burger ($14), fresh ground lamb mixed with spices, and topped off with Cashel blue cheese, served with hand-cut chips and lettuce, tomato, and onion on a sesame-seed roll. This burger was huge - probably 10-12 ounces, cooked to a perfect medium-rare, and came positively slathered with a Cashel blue cheese sauce (I have visited the Cashel farm in Ireland, adore this cheese, and had every reason to be "pulling for" this sauce, but this was just gloppy and gross); the tub of ketchup and extremely garlicky mayonnaise for my fries went completely untouched (except for a fingertip-taste of the mayonnaise to gage the garlic). This sandwich was over-the-top, and while the lamb was of good quality (how often do you see such a large lamb-burger topped with Cashel blue?), it was simply too much gook - I ended up opening up my roll, scraping off the sauce, and eating the meat alone. Many people order this sandwich, and I suspect many people like it, but it's just too much for me, and I'll stick with more refined cooking here the next time I come. Onward!

I took hopsing's post about Osteria da Nino very seriously when I read it, and kidnapped my young dining companion last night, smuggling him into Shirlington - Osteria da Nino is very close to Carlyle, but since it's one building off of "the strip," it was completely dead. This is a restaurant you have to know about in order to find, and it's going to need to get some publicity out there in order to succeed, especially at dinnertime. And succeed it should, because right now there's nothing else this good in all of Shirlington. The Beef Wellington I had the other night at Samuel Beckett's was certainly right up there, but that was a daily special, and I'm unconvinced Beckett's can produce cooking of that high level of quality when the pub is crowded; perhaps it can.

I started off with a glass of Pinot Grigio ($8) as we waited for our two appetizers to split, and as soon as they hit the table, I knew we had found what has been missing from Shirlington for so long with Osteria da Nino - a somewhat spacious, spartan restaurant that could use a bit of warmth and interior design to bring together the cold-feeling hard surfaces into something resembling, dare I say, the product of a woman's touch.

Fritto Misto ($12) was a large cone containing some unusual and delicious fried items: shrimp, salmon, and fennel (the fennel being the only miss, being cut too large and not cooked quite long enough) - still, this was an excellent rendition of fritto misto that is well-worth ordering. Seasoned perfectly by itself, it did not need the garlic-curry mayonnaise dipping sauce it came with, but we used it in moderation anyway. Delicious, and a good contrast to our Insalata Burrata ($10), a fantastic combination of burrata, cherry tomatoes, plums, nectarines, and a bit of pesto - I'm not sure where the chef got this recipe from, but it works, and it works brilliantly. If this dish, or a variation of it, is on the menu, order it.

Garganelli con ragí¹ di maiale ($17) was a good-sized bowl of piping hot garganelli pasta, with Papa Weever Farms pork ragu, fennel, spices, gremmalata, parmesan, and baby arugula. There was nothing surprising about this dish (unlike with the burrata), but it was satisfying, and a well-conceived foil to the Filetto di Branzino ($24) which came with a fascinating brick-sized rectangle of Sicilian tahboli (yes, it's the same thing you'll get in a Lebanese restaurant, except with pomegranates), arrabiatta sauce, and crispy faro. The sea bass was cooked by someone who knew what they were doing, with its skin crisped just the way you wanted it.

"The Rules" of being a restaurant critic say you aren't supposed to judge a restaurant after one visit, but I've never been one to follow rules. This is a very exciting, promising restaurant, and is so much better than anything I've ever had in Shirlington (Beef Wellington notwithstanding) that I'm making a beeline in its direction the next time I head down S. Quincy Street.

Parking is plentiful in a lot just behind the restaurant.

---

An important addendum: I got a text message from someone who saw this, warning me that their first visit to Osteria da Nino was a wonderful surprise; their second visit had more inconsistencies. Doesn't it figure that the *only* time I ever question critics' standards, is the time I get called out for possibly jumping the gun! :) Anyway, I'm not at liberty to go into detail, but you'll probably read more about this later.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My husband and I went a second time last night and all was still good.  Service was much improved this time.  My husband adored the squid ink pasta with seafood dish, declaring it better than many dishes we had in Italy.  I had the daily special, lobster ravioli.  Totally decadent and delicious, albeit a little too salty.  My husband was not excited about the spinach salad.  He still loved the fritto misto and I still loved the fried oysters (another special). All in all, this place is a keeper and I hope others will check it out soon because I don't want this place to go out of business--there, I've said it.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We went again and bumped into some neighbors who were there on their first visit.   The guy said the chicken marsala was the best dish he has ever had.  He didn't say best chicken marsala dish or best chicken dish--he said best dish he has ever had!  I'm trying it next time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Went last night.

Very, very warm and friendly service - I think that should be high lighted. Even though I've said it before, DC-area restaurants have great service, I think a lot has to do with how heavy people are into social media, so they try really hard. Oh, and this place is super dog friendly. I'm not a dog person, but my dining companion was and she brought her Akita, and that is a dog that I really like. They brought out a water bowl for Kodiak which was nice. Certain dogs just attract ridiculous amounts of attention. Akitas are one of them. It's like I was with a celebrity, people kept coming to the table.

Anyway, Nino comes by and he's quite a talker, and not in a bad way. Just a super friendly guy, really funny. He gave us hell about not drinking this evening, and tells a funny story about him coming home after work and crushing a bottle of wine, while his wife berates him, ha. He told us business isn't doing as great as he'd hoped, and he places the blame on that on the location, because it's not on the main drag. He's right. There are a lot of terrible but busy places in the main part of Shirlington. Even with their excellent social media reviews, just not getting the traffic. He said people pass by from the station, pick up a menu, and then never show back up or take several months to try the place. How frustrating!

The specials were a swordfish, and 2 other things that didn't sound that exciting. The bread came, it was good but not warm. This happened recently at another restaurant (Bastille). Shouldn't it be warm? I don't know French or Italian food (other than Italian-American chains) all that well. The olive oil and pesto was tasty. Bright green in color which was interesting.

We ordered to start - polipo (octopus, black hummus, cucumbers, capers, sultans, pomegranate), mitili pepperade (mussels in a peppery broth), and a charcuterie/cheese plate (speck, salumi, and tallegio).

I liked the octopus, my dining partner didn't think the capers went will with it. It was tender and not too chewy, lightly fried. The mussels were good, not a whole lot of broth. It was flavorful and not super spicy, but when it would go down, I'd catch the pepper and cough a bit, ha. For $15, the cheese/charcuterie is a little more volume than you get at most places.

We were actually pretty full by then, so we split the squid ink pasta. I don't remember what the menu said last night, but it came with mussels surrounding it (I did not want more, if you've seen in me a t-shirt, I'm pretty mussel'd out, hee hee), some calamari, and shrimp. The sauce was not puttanesca. The menu says shrimps, scallops, calamari, in puttanesca sauce. Maybe they ran out of scallops? They did not mention if they had.

All in all, very good experience, I think I should have tried the pork ragu instead, or the carbonara, or the chicken marsala, so I'll chalk up an average meal to poor ordering.

$67+ tip.

-S

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since Palette 22 sadly lost its chef, we didn't go there when we went to Signature this past weekend, but went to Osteria da Nino instead. Lovely meal. While the burrata appetizer didn't have the plum/nectarine ingredients Don mentioned above (too bad, as it's prime season for them), it had a nice olive base, and the burrata itself was the best I've had in quite some time, with a proper creamy center that has been lacking in other restaurants.

I had the ricotta gnudi with crabmeat over a sauce made of peas. Delicious tender gnudi. I would have liked a little more crab, though.

Son had calamari and then two large beef meatballs that were great. Others in the party had salads, but my husband also had a beef lasagna special that he said was exactly what he wanted.

Desserts - mini cannolis and a panna cotta with morello cherries - were very very good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went here for dinner tonight with a friend, and we settled in for a nice meal, having heard all of the accolades. It mostly met expectations, save for one big miss.

I ordered the octopus appetizer and the gnudi with crab main course. My friend ordered the arugula and finocchio salad and the cavatelli with Elysian Fields lamb, the latter mostly because we are both baseball fans, and those of you who are baseball fans will get the reference. He thoroughly enjoyed the cavatelli, but didn't seem enthused by the arugula and finocchio.

The octopus was great, and although the shaved fennel added nothing special, the lone tentacle of octopus was very nice. (A main course with a few tentacles would be even better.) Then came the gnudi with crab -- delicious flavor, and wonderful texture on the gnudi. BUT, I started lining up the shards of crab shell that I was picking out of my mouth along the side of the bowl. I finished the dish, but 17 shards of crab shell lined the edge of my bowl. I pointed it out to the server, and mentioned that they shouldn't be serving this dish to other patrons in this condition tonight. I didn't ask, but the dish was taken off my bill. I give them credit for that.

(I consider crab shell, salad green dirt, clam grit, and mussels beards to be in the same category of inattentiveness and indifference. All can be avoided, but the kitchen has to want to avoid them.)

Nino patrolled the dining room and offered pleasantries all around. I would certainly return, but I don't think I would order the gnudi again.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...