Buca Di Bacco

At a glance, Buca Di Bacco reads like the neighbourhood Italian every town keeps one of — pasta and pizza, a Friday reservation, a long table for the family. The menu argues otherwise. Alongside the table classics it runs a current of regional particulars, the kind of cooking that separates a kitchen rooted in real Italian regions from one trading on a broad-strokes idea of Italy. In Downtown Oakville it does the everyday work a neighbourhood restaurant is asked to do — a weeknight plate of pasta, a planned dinner for a table of eight — and it does that work with more range than the label promises.

The everyday spine is all there, and then some. Antipasti run from arancini — rice balls bound with mozzarella and tomato sauce — to burrata set over tomato with prosciutto on offer, and calamari fritti sent out with lemon aioli. Meatballs come in tomato sauce under Parmigiano, the caesar with a house dressing and the option of grilled chicken or shrimp. The pasta covers the table classics — spaghetti bolognese, lasagna, a penne alla vodka built on pancetta and onion — alongside tortellini stuffed with ricotta and finished with prosciutto, mushroom, and cream. But it is the gnocchi cacio e pepe, potato dumplings under cracked pepper, truffle, and Romano, that shows a kitchen reaching past the standards. Chicken marsala holds the lighter mains; the spaghetti pescatore pulls mussels, clams, and shrimp together with white wine and cherry tomato for the heavier ones.