CIMA Enoteca

An enoteca is supposed to lead with the wine, and CIMA keeps that part — the bottle is the reason the Locke Street menu reads as a wine list with a kitchen attached rather than a quick red-sauce stop. But the kitchen has other ideas, running two full programs that each expect to headline. The pastas are house-made, and the Gnocchi al Tartufo is the richest of them: potato gnocchi in truffle cream with roasted mushrooms, chives, a finishing thread of truffle oil, and Parmigiano Reggiano. The pizzas come from a wood oven built for the Neapolitan style. Three things most places would rank in order; here they split the night evenly, paced to late dinner hours rather than a turn-and-burn table.

The pizza list proves the wood oven is no sideline. Patata is the one to notice past the classics — roasted potato, fennel sausage, caramelized onion, and rosemary over mozzarella, Fior di Latte, and Grana Padano, a pie that eats more like a roast than a snack. The Soppressata finishes cured meat and red onion with peperoncino honey, sweet against the heat. The Funghi turns earthy, with roasted mushrooms, caramelized onion, chives, and truffle oil. The 'Nduja builds on a vodka-sauce base with smoked bacon and a spreadable chili sausage that does most of the talking, while the Carne stacks sausage, soppressata, and bacon for the table that came hungry. The Margherita and the Pepperoni, the latter built on Ezzo's pepperoni, hold the line for anyone who wants the oven kept honest.

Back on the pasta side, range is the point. Tagliatelle ai Frutti di Mare brings baby clams and shrimp into tomato sauce brightened with white wine, garlic, parsley, and basil oil — the coastal counterweight to the truffle gnocchi. Rigatoni al Vodka runs spicy, chili oil cutting a rosé sauce finished with Parmigiano Reggiano. Pappardelle di Manzo Brasato goes long and slow, braised short-rib ragù pulled together with gremolata. Orecchiette con Salsiccia keeps fennel sausage, rapini, and peperoncino in a sharper register, and a plain Spaghetti al Pomodoro waits there for the purist. A kitchen that can move from truffle cream to clams to braised beef to a three-ingredient tomato sauce without dropping a stitch gives a table more than one reason to come back to the pasta page.

The room carries the same double identity. It reads romantic enough for a planned night out — modern, polished decor, the open kitchen and its oven in plain view — but stays lively enough that it never goes quiet. That range is why the antipasti matter as much as the mains. A table can open wide: burrata with Maldon salt and crostini, a board of Salumi e Formaggi, fire-roasted Gamberi in citrus butter and scallion, pork-and-beef Polpette in veal stock, fried Carciofi in basil oil, grilled lamb Spiedini with pink peppercorn, and Arancini, with focaccia and Cerignola olives to fill the gaps. Groups use that breadth to dodge the one-pie-each problem; couples use it to graze through a bottle.

Even the salads pull their weight rather than padding the page. The Tritata loads iceberg and radicchio with olives, red onion, cherry tomato, pickled banana peppers, crispy chickpeas, and Grana Padano under an oregano vinaigrette; the Cesare runs crispy prosciutto through leaf lettuce and curly endive. None of it is precious. And when the night can't come to Locke Street, the same kitchen sends pizza and pasta out for takeout, which keeps the wood oven working well past the dining-room tables.

CIMA opened on Locke Street in 2017 and has spent the years since narrowing what it does rather than widening it. The enoteca framing is the through-line: pasta made in house, pizza from the wood oven, antipasti built to share, and a wine list meant to carry all of it from the first board to the last glass. None of it leans on a backstory or a famous name. What carries a Friday night here is smaller and more concrete — the truffle gnocchi landing, the Patata coming out of the oven blistered and right, and the second bottle arriving before anyone has to ask.