Abruzzi

The pasta at Abruzzi is rolled in the kitchen every day, the pancetta and guanciale cured in the same shop, and the menu redrawn every month around what Southwestern Ontario farms are sending. The restaurant takes its name from the mountain-and-coast region of central Italy and treats the borrowing as a working brief, not a flourish. The framing it uses for itself — part neighbourhood bistro, part elegant Italian ristorante — describes a kitchen that does both jobs at the same downtown address. Abruzzi opened on King Street in 2010 with a daily-pasta-and-whole-animal-butchery approach, and the menu has kept moving since.

The current dinner menu reads as a tour of the kitchen's instincts. Antipasti land on Grilled Octopus with patatas bravas, roasted garlic aioli, chimichurri and smoked paprika; Burrata with grilled red grapes, house-cured lonza and pistachios; Heirloom Tomato with caciocavallo and a prosciutto XO vinaigrette; and an Antipasto Board built from local, imported and house-cured meats with toasted almonds and olives. Housemade pasta is the spine — Angel Hair with shrimp, scallops, grape tomatoes and basil; Gnocchi Fra Diavolo with Calabrian chili and burrata; Mafalde al Funghi under truffle cream; Braised Beef and Ricotta Ravioli with fried Shogun maitake. Mains step heavier into Grilled Beef Tenderloin with crispy potato gnocchi and red wine jus, Duck Breast, and Wild BC Sablefish.