My wife has a birthday very close to Christmas and this year it was in the middle of the week. She really wanted to go to Chicago for her birthday, but I was tethered to the office due to a couple three big year-end deals that I was working on. She had mentioned sometime before about an Italian restaurant in Iowa City that she always wanted to go, a small place by the name of Baroncini Ristorante. After I got out of the office that day, we drove over to Iowa City for her birthday dinner.
Gianluca Baroncini grew up in Italy in a family that knew their way around a kitchen. He loved to cook with his family, so much so that he enrolled in the Italian national culinary institute in Verona. After graduation, Baroncini worked in the kitchens of two prestigious restaurants in Verona, Il Desco where he was the assistant chef, and Terrazza di Giulietta where he was the executive chef.
Pictured at right - Gianluca Baroncini. Photo courtesy The Daily Iowan.
At the age of 24, Baroncini immigrated to the U.S. to work in restaurants in Washington, D.C. and Miami. But in a complete change of scenery, Baroncini decided to learn how to fly planes. He studied aviation aeronautics at Utah Valley University, and upon graduation Baroncini became a commercial pilot for a regional airline.
But it was during a trip to Iowa City about 10 years ago when Baroncini noticed the dearth of good Italian restaurants in the college community. He found a small space on S. Linn Street in Iowa City and opened his eponymous restaurant in late May of 2011.
From the start Baroncini wanted to use only fresh and locally-sourced foods, not only from Iowa but from his home country. Baroncini wasn't your typical Italian-American restaurant, but a more authentic Italian place where Baroncini once said that he would prepare food in Iowa the way it was truly prepared in Italy. He focused on pasta dishes and made his pasta fresh in the kitchen each day.
But Baroncini couldn't get past his love for flying planes and once the restaurant had been established after about five years, he started to fly commercial charter flights on a part-time basis in addition to running the restaurant. What a life - flying planes and running your own Italian restaurant in Iowa!
We parked just across the street from Baroncini just before they opened at 5 p.m. (see map) We walked around the downtown area of Iowa City for awhile before getting into Baroncini just after 5. There were already people seated in the restaurant when we got there. We were greeted by a young man who asked if we had a reservation. We didn't, but he was able to put us in a booth opposite the small bar.
To say Baroncini is cozy and intimate is an understatement. The space is long and narrow with the front area featuring a number of tables with banquette seating along the wall. We were happy that they seated us in a booth which is much better than banquette seating any day in my book. Above the seating area were deep ledges that held Baroncini's prodigious selection of wines - many of them from Italy.
A young lady came by to drop off food menus for us. My wife immediately asked her what the specials were that evening. She sort of stammered and said, "Uh, I'm sort of new here. I'm just helping out and filling in tonight. It's my first night." It wasn't long after that when our real server for the evening, a young lady by the name of Kaylie, came by to greet us and take our drink order. I ordered a Peroni to start out with and my wife got a Tito's and cranberry. We were going to have wine for dinner, but we still didn't know what we were going to order.
In the tradition of great Italian restaurants, Baroncini features a number of antipasti plates, along with soups and salads to start out with. Pasta dishes with a choice of their house marinara sauce, a bolognese sauce, parmesan cheese sauce, or a meatball sauce that was handed down to Gianluca Baroncini from his grandmother were available to go with the pasta dishes. Entrees such as a grilled veal chop, a pork scaloppine dish, seared Scottish salmon, and a pan-seared beef tenderloin covered in a porcini mushroom and espresso demi-glace.
Starting out, we got the the bruschetta topped with mozzarella and tomatoes. For a $5 upcharge, we added prosciutto to it. But because it was happy hour between 5 and 6 p.m., all appetizers were half-priced. When I ordered, I said, "We'll take the bruschetta with the prosciutto." Well, Kaylie thought we had ordered both the bruschetta with another appetizer, the polenta with prosciutto. My wife and I sort of looked at one another and thought, "Did she think we ordered two appetizers?"
We were able to flag her down and I told her that I wanted to make sure that she knew it was the bruschetta with the add-on prosciutto, not the polenta and prosciutto. "I'm sorry, you guys," she said apologetically. "The menu is a little new and I forgot that we had the bruschetta with the prosciutto add-on." But, she got it correct. The bruschetta came with toasted bread - the same kind of bread that was served to us initially with an oil herb side. It was topped with sliced baby cherry tomatoes, fresh chopped basil, fresh mozzarella and rolled prosciutto on top. Aged balsamic vinegar was drizzled on the plate. The bruschetta was a great start to the meal.
We both ordered salads after that. I got the regular house salad. It was a plate of mixed greens, chopped tomatoes and garbanzo beans that was drizzle in a house Italian dressing. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was fine.
My wife went with the roasted beet and spinach salad. Orange slices, roasted hazelnuts, and goat cheese was mixed in with the beets and spinach leaves. A lemon vinaigrette topped the salad. My wife thought the salad was fabulous. She ate a little over half of it before she thought she better stop because she didn't think she'd be able to finish her meal after the salad, the bruschetta and the bread we'd had before.
For my main course that evening, I was sort of torn between two things - the agnolotti pasta (sort of a ravioli) stuffed with locally-raised ground beef and parmesan cheese and served in a light sage and brown butter sauce. But in the long run, I decided upon the cannelloni stuffed with locally-raised ground pork and beef along with spinach, ricotta and parmesan cheeses. It was served with a creamy béchamel/marinara sauce.
My wife thought about getting the Australian rack-of-lamb, but ended up getting the tagliolini ai tartufi - a thin fettuccine style pasta topped with an Italian truffle and mushroom cream sauce. For an upcharge, she got a small filet that was pan-seared and sliced.
To go along with our meal, I wanted to get a red wine. The vast majority of wines on the menu are Italian and I'm not as well-versed on Italian wines as I am with West Coast, South American or Australian wines. But I did see a wine that I was somewhat familiar with - a Zenato Valpolicella Ripasso reserve wine. It was a big-bodied red that had a bit of a spicy and peppery taste on the tongue. It was an excellent wine to pair with our food.
As I said before, the food at Baroncini is not your typical Italian food. The cannelloni was filled with meat and cheese with chopped spinach and the marinara/béchamel sauce gave it an even more creamy texture to it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it wasn't exactly what I expected and it sort of shocked me at first. I asked Kaylie if she could bring me a small bowl of the marinara sauce to cut some of the creaminess of the sauce. But Baroncini's marinara is a creamy tomato marinara - similar in taste to tomato soup. Once again, different from what I expected, but it wasn't unpleasant in the least.
My wife was a little more perplexed about her pasta in the truffle/mushroom cream sauce. The pasta was sort of balled together - almost overcooked to a degree - and it was sort of tough for her to scoop up and twist on a spoon. She did really like the sauce and she thought the steak was very good, as well. She gave me half a thick slice of the steak that turned out to be a 4 to 6 ounce piece of meat. And it was good.
As always after a big dinner like this, my wife likes to get a dessert to finish off the night. (They also had a very impressive list of Scotch to choose from at Baroncini. I tried to get my wife to get an after dinner drink, but between a couple three glasses of wine and the vodka/cranberry drink she had to start out, she said she didn't need to get a Scotch.) The dessert list included a tiramisu, a bread pudding with vanilla sauce and topped with ice cream, and a caramelized mascarpone cheese cake. But she was torn between two items - the vanilla gelato with espresso, and the chocolate hazelnut cake. We ended up ordering both.
We were in Chicago in the late summer last year and staying downtown. After a nice meal one evening, we went over to Eataly (click here to see the Road Tips entry on Eataly) and I got a vanilla gelato with espresso. It was unbelievable in taste. I love gelato and I love espresso. What's not to love about that combination? Kaylie brought out a snifter of the vanilla gelato with a piece of biscotti embedded in the top with blackberries and fresh sliced strawberries mixed in. She then turned to the bar and grabbed a small container of the espresso and poured it on top. The espresso coagulated at the bottom mixing in with the rich gelato.
The chocolate hazelnut cake featured a small round segment of cake that was served warm, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream with thin chocolate wafers sliced into the ice cream. Fresh blackberries, sliced strawberries and a dollop of real whipped cream came on the side. It was finished with a chocolate drizzle. The cake was sinfully decadent and very rich in taste.
But the gelato and espresso was the highlight. My wife had a small taste of mine when we were at Eataly and she couldn't get that out of her mind. The serving we got at Baroncini was about double the size of what I was served at Eataly and the taste sensation was outstanding. I really liked the chocolate hazelnut cake, but the vanilla gelato with espresso was completely off the charts.
My wife was a little upset that we couldn't get into Chicago for her birthday, but she was more than happy with the trip we took to Iowa City to give Baroncini Ristorante a try. It's not your typical Italian food - it's more like what you'd find in restaurants in Italy. And that's what chef Gianluca Baroncini has brought to Iowa City. For nearly 9 years, Baroncini has offered authentic Italian classics and has educated many - like us - as to what you would find at restaurants in his home country. Baroncini Ristorante is a cozy little place with a great ambiance. The food was very good, the selection of wine they had was impressive, service was friendly and professional, and the desserts we had were out of this world. Baroncini Ristorante has made many "Best of" lists for Italian restaurants for a few years and after our visit there, there's absolutely no doubt why.
Comments