Ciao Bella

Ciao Bella is the kind of Italian a Hamilton table picks when nobody can agree on what they want. The kitchen sends out wood-fired Napoletana pizza, handmade pasta, and a serious seafood plate from the same pass, so the pizza orderer, the truffle-gnocchi orderer, and the chicken-parm loyalist all eat well at one table. It sits on Augusta Street in the middle of Hess Village, downtown Hamilton's going-out core, built for the evening out rather than the quick bite — the long table, the shared plates, the second cocktail. Nothing on the menu demands a vocabulary lesson, and most of it rewards a return visit.

The signatures sit in the pasta, and it is made by hand. Gnocchi al Tartufo arrives pillowy under shaved black truffle and a Parmesan fondue, the clearest first-visit order on the menu. Rigatoni alla Vodka Piccante carries Calabrian nduja, Parmigiano, and stracciatella — red-sauce heat with a creamy edge — while Pesto Paccheri leans green and rich with basil, stracciatella, confit tomatoes, and toasted pine nuts. The Pescatore Chitarra loads lemon-pepper guitar-string pasta with mussels, clams, shrimp, and squid in a tomato sugo, and the Linguine all'Astice goes further still, folding poached Atlantic lobster and shrimp into a lemon mascarpone sauce. For the table that wants the familiar anchor, Chicken Parmigiana comes layered with fresh cheese and San Marzano over spaghetti pomodoro, eggplant parmigiana standing in for the vegetarian who still wants the treatment, and a handmade Fettuccine Alfredo kept simple with Parmigiano Reggiano and cracked black pepper.