Cheap and buono

Tutto Bene brings more Italian fare to Mile-End

by SPANKY HOROWITZ

I can't believe I'm back on St-Viateur again. I know there must be other streets with restaurants popping up like poison ivy--but I just keep comin' back to scratch this itch.

This week: Italian. No, not Brodino, the stylish sandwich counter owned by extended members of the Euro-Deli family, whose prices just went up. It's not Nonna's, the family-run Italian eatery right next door. This time I tried Tutto Bene, a cafeteria-style sit-down resto right next to Open Da Night. With this many Italian food merchants (and don't forget Marche Latina and Boulangerie St-Viateur) on one little street, you've got to have something special to bring in the paysanos.

The new owners of Tutto Bene have invested considerable time and money renovating the place. A brand new sign, a very clean interior, and shelves displaying imported jarred tomatoes only gave me the impression that I had just walked into an American-Italian chain-resto aimed at tourists. I hope the Open Da Night regulars are ready for the cameras--"Look Mommy, take a picture of the cool people."

The one truly ambitious and admirable addition to the restaurant is a wood-burning oven. This feature immediately caught my eye and my stomach quickly followed. One disappointing oddity was the "Rotisserie" sign. I saw no hint of a rotisserie behind the counter and the menu displayed no rotisserie items--which is probably A.O.K. with the Peruvian rotisserie across the street.

The menu has appetizers, sandwiches, pastas, salads and 23 kinds of pizzas. The prices are extremely reasonable and if you order from the table d'hôte ($6-$9), salad and coffee are included. It's worth it for the salad, but the coffee is drip so you may want to have yours next door.

An 11-inch pizza will run you from $7 to $10. I tried the #20 (capicollo & calamata). The dough was thin and very tasty, but the toppings were disappointing. The pieces of capicollo seemed grocery-store style and were just floating on the pizza. The flavour could easily have been intensified if the pizza were cooked a bit longer to brown the meat.

Even worse than the capicollo were the olives. They were real olives all right, but they still had the pits inside! Without wanting to risk losing a tooth, I tediously picked each olive off the pizza-pie, removed the stones and then returned them to their little dents in the mozzarella. Basically, a little effort could have resulted in a truly great pizza, which would definitely make the wood-fired oven a good investment.

For pasta, I sampled the lasagna with meat, the vegetable lasagna and the tortellini with rosé sauce. The meat lasagna was leaning towards the bland side; the vegetable version fared much better, with crisp green beans and other tender veggies used in place of some unseasoned ground beef and cubes of ham. Even if you are a devout carnivore, order the veggie. As for the tortellini, it was tasty and the sauce was nice, but a little too thin.

Tutto Bene will survive because it looks nice, it's inexpensive and it has three other things going for it: location, location, location. Since there are no more resto licenses available on St-Viateur, I reckon that there are several hungry businessmen lurking in the shadows, waiting for a vacancy. With very little effort, mostly involving seasonings and some other small details, Tutto Bene could become a lasting institution. I will return in several weeks to see how they're doing.

Tutto Bene

Address: 120 St-Viateur W.

Phone: 270-4557

Hours: seven days a week, 11am-9pm

Best features: very cheap

Vegetarian friendly: yes

Wheelchair access: yes

Alcohol: beer, Italian beer and aperitifs

Credit cards: yes

Price: $5-$15 per person, before drinks, taxes and tip

Rating: HHH out of HHHH