ENOTECA MARIA / THREE STARS
By Pamela Silvestri
March 5, 2009
After being totally spoiled by home-cooked meals while on maternity leave, this palate scoped out several restaurants for possible review: Only Enoteca Maria made the grade for a solid three-star rating.
This eatery certainly sets the bar for quality Italian food in the borough. In short, this is not your abodanza/gravy type of joint. Instead, Enoteca’s style translates to simple, tasty edibles that can be pleasantly rough around the edges. Indeed it has little hang ups – we’ll get to that later – but wholesome home-style cooking is the ultimate reward from this St. George kitchen.
Enoteca came to Staten Island in winter 2007 with a unique concept: Female cooks from various regions of Italy played chef with a different lady starring behind the stove every day. The idea turned out to be a winning one that whet the appetites of bloggers citywide.
It is still a little wine bar that serves dinners (no more lunches–boo!) and flavorful accoutrements on heavy robin’s egg plateware, an attractive backdrop for colorful food. Too bad these neat table settings make reasonably sized portions appear small, and plates typically are cool to the touch, something that pulls heat out of food.
Gifts from the kitchen–tasty amuse bouche like sundried tomato strips with pignoli nuts or garlicky cauliflower come with hunks of foccaccia – start the meal. Not so amusing for some patrons: They arrive after the food order is placed, hence no bread basket goodies on which to nibble.
Along with apps, entrees and handmade pastas, the menu features spuntino (small plates) like chick pea and grape tomato salad seasoned with oregano, an artichoke swollen with seasoned breadcrumb or quartered then marinated and grilled with balsamic vinegar. Polpette (meatballs) are intensely garlicked with distinct meat flavor, a nice chemistry that happens when few fillers clutter the meat mixture. Sliced mushrooms in “sweet tomato sauce” are very good, although the sauce looked unappealingly heavy with oil.
And pizza–as in the explosively flavorful four-cheese variety which melds gorgonzola, provolone, mozzarella and parmesan–is like no other pie on S.I., something perhaps a home cook might pull together in his own kitchen using top notch ingredients.
One recent evening, cook Adelina made gnocchi in a few shining flavors–sundried tomato, spinach and potato–turning out those steaming dumplings with pleasant pillowy-doughy texture. Vibrantly colored sautéed fresh veggies shared a plate with a fist-sized puff pastry pocket folded with floured chicken breast bits, oozing mozzarella and tangy orange marmalade, a seemingly simple combination that delivered sophisticated, contrasting flavors.
Zuppe di Pesce (housemade seafood soup) was thick with calamari yet shy on broth. Salmon with capers and olives featured a fish that was overcooked and devoid of flavor. Perfectly steamed whole Branzini bass came tucked in a crumpled mass of aluminum foil. Basted in its own juices with fresh garlic and herbs, it was thoroughly delightful despite a messy presentation. A few items listed on the menu teased but weren’t always featured, including capunatz (sheep’s head) stuffed with breadcrumb. With dessert, cookies were grainy and could be better. Biscotti, presumably a staple sweet in the repertoire, was notably absent on our visits. But an island of vanilla semifreddo (half-frozen gelato) floating in espresso was extraordinary.
Enoteca’s patrons have expressed mixed emotions on service, something worthy of mention.
Fans of the place enthuse over the relaxed atmosphere and the owner’s attentiveness. A server (or the owner himself for that matter) might replenish a beverage on the house, bring over a freshly prepared side dish for sampling or add fruit to an almost finished pitcher of house wine. Some find this behavior to be over-solicitous. Others, like myself, find the gestures to be unpretentious, incredibly warm and a sign of good service from one of the borough’s finer establishments.
Menu: Enoteca (Italian translation: wine bar) serves home-style regional Italian food cooked by several different female cooks straight from The Boot. The menu has a staple spuntino (a menu of small plates meant for sharing as appetizers), but for the most part offerings change nightly depending on the featured gal in the kitchen.
Atmosphere: Narrow storefront houses marble floors & tabletops, pearlescent subway wall tiles & caged glass bulbs making for a sophisticated industrial décor. Seats 30 (only two seats at the bar). Acoustics can be brash and loud but for some customers this is part of Enoteca’s unique charm.
Hours: Abbreviated menu of appetizers, salads & pizza Wednesday-Sunday, 3 to 5 p.m. Full menu starts at 5 p.m. and runs to about 11 p.m. Evening hours can be erratic so call before paying a visit.
Prices: Apps generally run under $10; most entrees under $20. Major credit cards accepted.
Drinks: Bellinis (seasonal fruit floated in wine), plus an interesting Italian wine inventory with all bottles offered by the glass. Oenophiles will love the proper vino stemware & the staff’s enthusiasm for allowing sample sips.
Specs: Street/meter parking is plentiful after 5 p.m. Municipal parking lot is across the street. Check the St. George Theater schedule: When shows are playing, neighborhood parking is tight. Wheelchair access is very awkward but doable at a few tables. Bathroom is too tiny for negotiating a wheelchair.
(Article reprinted with kind permission of The Staten Island Advance)
Owners Denise and Jody Scaravella had their own version of the Field of Dreams mantra: If you build it, they will cook. It seems they were right, as the lynchpin in their twice-daily (sometimes more) changing menu is the half-dozen, give or take, rotating women chefs designing menus inspired by the delights of their home regions of Italy. One day, you might take a seat in the slim, urban-sleek dining room and find Sicilian specialties, like a frittata made with fresh artichokes, or pasta con sarde. Another day, you may be presented with a Marche meal of panini draped with sharp arugula, olive oil, and cured beef. Every day is a lovely surprise, as is Jody’s all-Italian wine list, filled with little-known varietals and regional better-knowns like the plummy Lacryma Christi. Read the full review in 
Six Italian grandmothers of St. George, Staten Island have got this whole restaurant business all figured out. By taking turns at the stovetop, each nonna gets to rule the kitchen one day each week, and no one has to work more than a few weekly lunch or dinner shifts. Everyone gets a chance to cook and nobody collapses, exhausted in the gnocchi–it is a win-win arrangement. But really, it’s the lucky residents of St. George who are perhaps the most fortunate, as they get a glimpse into regional home cooking from a different part of Italy nearly every night of the week. As should already be clear, this is not your typical Italian restaurant: this is a place where meals are punctuated by frequent appearances from a well-proportioned older Italian woman who, in halting English, inquires at every table whether everything is “bene.†And the only real response is: “Si.”