Brunello At 27 On Fourth

Brunello cooks veal with more range than most Italian kitchens attempt. The medallions turn up sautéed with marsala and mushrooms, brightened with lemon and capers over roasted potatoes, layered under prosciutto, bufala mozzarella, and sage for a saltimbocca alla Romana, or sauced with capers, garlic, and tomato beside gnocchi gorgonzola. The kitchen also braises a whole shank to the bone for an ossobuco bedded on pappardelle. That fluency with a single cut signals what this dinner house on Fourth Street East is after — Italian cooking with a Tuscan accent, set down in the heart of Collingwood's heritage district.

A meal here tends to open wide. The antipasti run from a beef carpaccio under arugula, capers, white truffle oil, and shaved asiago to venison meatballs with porcini in a marsala sauce, P.E.I. mussels steamed in marinara or white wine, and a rustico board of salami, prosciutto, melon, artichokes, and buffalo mozzarella built for the table to share. Salads carry the same care: arugula with fennel, oranges, and walnuts; a house Insalata Brunello of mixed greens, roasted red peppers, goat cheese, grapes, and walnuts; a Caesar finished with crispy prosciutto rather than left plain. A scampi fra diavola in spicy tomato with pesto and capers and an Italian lentil soup round out a starter list with plenty to graze across.

From there the list reaches in every direction the kitchen can plausibly cover. Pasta runs from homemade gnocchi in a light tomato-and-basil sauce to ravioli stuffed with wild mushrooms in a porcini truffle cream and a tortellini boscaiola in rose sauce with sausage and mushrooms, while the seafood side stretches to a linguine tutto mare piled with baby clams, shrimp, calamari, scallops, and mussels. Risotto arrives two ways — arborio with shrimp and clams, or with a wild-mushroom broth and truffle. The heavier plates hold a beef tenderloin crowned with pancetta over a sweet potato gratin, a rack of lamb, a grilled branzino dressed with caponata, and a cod baccalà with capers and olives. Dessert keeps to the classics: a house tiramisu, a zabaglione warmed with marsala, and crepes filled with mascarpone and flambéed tableside with Grand Marnier.

That breadth is the design rather than a hedge. A card carrying four veal preparations, a rack of lamb, a grilled branzino, baccalà, and a Tuscan pasta e fagioli is built so a table that can't agree still finds its plate — the pasta-first diner, the seafood order, and the guest who wants a deeper, slower course all sit down together. Separate wine and cocktail lists confirm the intent: this is a kitchen that expects to hold a table for the length of a dinner, not turn it.

The hours draw the same line. Brunello — the full name is Brunello at 27 on Fourth, after the Fourth Street East address — opens for dinner Tuesday through Saturday, five until ten, and does nothing else: no lunch, no brunch, no all-day café trade. It has worked that single service since 2013, adding only the practical modes a resort town rewards: a patio for warm evenings and takeout for the chalet table that wants the cooking without the white cloth.

Collingwood swells with skiers in winter and beachgoers in summer, and the cooking keeps its own clock against that churn. The references run Tuscan and traditional — ossobuco alla Toscana, pasta e fagioli alla Toscana, the zabaglione warmed with marsala — and the kitchen cooks them straight rather than reinventing them. A grilled-calamari plate over beans and artichokes, a caprese of buffalo mozzarella and basil pesto, a limoncello tartufo to finish: the vocabulary is familiar on purpose. The gnocchi, the veal, and the tiramisu read the same in February as they do in July.