19 Wall St, Worcester
(508) 767-1800
mareemontitrattoria.com

Bernard Whitmore

You can tell a restaurant is special when, with little complaining, people go out of their way to get to it and will happily wait twenty or thirty minutes for a table. Mare e Monti is one of those places; located in a residential neighborhood off Grafton Street, it’s not easy to get to. On the Thursday evening we went there, traffic on Wall Street was close to a standstill as drivers negotiated between rows of parked cars and crossing pedestrians.

Once inside we found the place packed, and it came as no surprise when we were advised of a longish wait for a table. Alternatively, they could immediately seat us at the bar. Perfect! We took a couple seats at the bar and, within moments, were rewarded with a basket of sliced Italian bread and garlic-infused dipping oil. Plus, getting glasses of Montepulciano was a snap!

The clamor of conversations between parties waiting for tables and people seated at the bar faded as we concentrated on making selections from the menu. Mare e Monte doesn’t make this easy, you could throw a dart at the appetizer menu and come up with something exceptional. Such as burrata con speck e rucola – Italian to its soul.

We decided to share the Polenta con Funghi appetizer, yellow maize creamed with grated Parmesan cheese until it set firm enough to be sliced. Two long wedges of light-golden polenta were presented upon a rectangular serving dish and mounded with meaty-firm sliced mushrooms sauteed till soft in shallot butter sauce. 

Polenta: Rustic in nature but elevated to elegance with the woodsy flavor of mushrooms and the buttery garlic-onion perfume of shallots. Which is it: Mare? Monti? Perhaps, but more likely: il bosco.

To continue in the tradition of  Italian peasant food, I chose for my entrée course Gnocchi Alessia. A simple dough of potato, flour and egg formed into balls: that’s gnocchi. In the wrong hands they can be a gluey disaster. It was a deft hand that produced these gnocchi; light and tender, they were folded over a stuffing of goat cheese mixed with roasted red pepper. My plate load of dumplings was drenched in Parmesan rosa cream sauce, so rich it was nearly red, and baked until the topping of mozzarella cheese slabs became molten and stretchy.

In that moment, our seats at the bar were the best in town; ruby-red Montepulciano wine, feathery-light gnocchi, dredging up sauce and strands of cheese with fresh bread: this is why we keep returning to Mare e Monti! Could it get any better? Well, yes. Combine the drama of tableside cooking with the extravagance of fifty pounds of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and you have Mare e Monte’s special: Spaghetti al Formaggio. 

In the kitchen a full wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano had been split down the center to expose an expanse of fresh cheese, soft amber in color, with fine crumbly grain texture.  Then they loaded onto the top shelf of a cart. Mare E Monti’s owner, Pina Conte, wheeled it over to us and, with a flourish, began to carve out thick shavings from the center of the wheel. Doing so formed a depression; essentially, she was creating a bowl made of cheese.

When satisfied with the amount of cheese shavings, Pina ignited a ladle of cognac and swirled the blue flame around the sides of the bowl, softening the cheese till she was satisfied with its consistency. The heady fragrance of the cognac and parmesan, the drama of the flash of fire; it was a crowd-gathering spectacle!

Then an assistant appeared with a serving pan of al dente spaghetti coated with their Parmesan rosa cream sauce. Pina gently tossed the spaghetti into the warm cheese bowl mixture, mixing it till it was evenly coated, and then she twirled gorgeous nests of spaghetti onto a serving dish that she garnished with more shavings from the Parmesan cheese bowl. That was my dining companion’s entrée. A pasta lover’s, cheese lover’s feast available only Tuesdays through Thursdays.

At this point dessert seemed needlessly extravagant. But then they reminded us of their Almond Torte Cake. Suddenly sharing a portion made great sense. Irresistibly creamy almond custard is piled into a billowy cake that’s topped with a thick layer of crumbly nutty crunch. 

I really didn’t need such a decadent end to my meal, but for the hundred years Mare e Monti has been making it, we’ve been ordering it. Why fight tradition?