Matteo's Ristorante

Count the layers in Matteo's lasagna and the tally runs to twelve — paper-thin sheets of fresh pasta stacked with beef and pork, then baked under a blend of Italian cheeses. The number is the point. It signals that the pasta is made in house and built up by hand, and that the kitchen treats it as a centrepiece rather than a default starch. Matteo's Ristorante is a family-owned Italian dining room on East Main Street in downtown Welland, in the Niagara region, and it cooks for a planned evening rather than a casual drop-in. Dinner runs Tuesday through Saturday, and a good part of the menu is organized around a wood-burning oven.

That oven turns out personal pizzas — a clean Margherita of fresh mozzarella and basil, and a Trappanese loaded with Italian sausage, spinach, roasted red peppers, and caramelized onions — and it does double duty on starters, baking prosciutto and goat cheese together under pesto and a balsamic reduction. The rest of the appetizers keep the same range: arancini stuffed with bocconcini and finished with pomodoro and prosciutto crisps, calamari fra diavolo in arrabbiata, and a full pound of PEI mussels steamed with shallot and garlic. The fresh-pasta list is where the kitchen stretches furthest — lobster ravioli filled with Atlantic lobster under a lemon cream sauce, linguine pescatore piled with PEI mussels, jumbo shrimp, and seared sea scallops, plus carbonara, a Bolognese built on ground beef and tenderloin, and a house Alfredo. The pan-and-oven mains hold the centre with an eight-ounce tenderloin in dolce gorgonzola and salted butter, veal piccata in lemon and capers, and a rack of lamb under a honey Dijon demi.