KOMA Restaurant

KOMA cooks bigger than it is. The South Windsor dining room holds eight tables and roughly forty seats, kept deliberately small so that one chef can put hands on nearly every plate that leaves the pass. The menu coming out of it reaches further than the seat count suggests — handmade pasta, composed seafood, steakhouse plates. That chef is Michael Anthony Barlozzari, whose name the restaurant carries in code: KOMA is Kitchen of Michael Anthony, his middle name and a tribute to the grandfather he cooks for. The constraint is the whole concept.

The menu opens where an Italian family table would. Stracciatella soup, bruschetta, calamari fritti, the arancini listed plainly as riceballs, and a middle anchored by handmade-style pasta — gnocchi, agnolotti, fettuccine, a carbonara, a rigatoni all'amatriciana. Then it turns, and not only toward the steakhouse. The brisket arrives slow-braised under a lobster tail and mussels, taking surf-and-turf further than the phrase usually goes. The Pacific cod is panko-crusted and finished with shellfish. The braised lamb shank cooks low in a bourbon jus and comes set over gorgonzola gnocchi, and the beef tenderloin picks up a red curry cream beside more of that same gnocchi. Springrolls and a seared tuna plate turn up too, the international edges of a menu that wanders past Italy and the steakhouse both.