Usually, the bartenders at the hotels we stay at have a good grasp of the various restaurants in the area. The two 20-something bartenders at the Hotel Andaluz that we stayed in during our trip to Albuquerque had no clue where to send us other than the hotel's restaurant just below the indoor/outdoor patio bar at the hotel. One of them did say that there were a number of restaurants on the main drag east of downtown Albuquerque. We took off and drove over to Central Avenue near the campus of the University of New Mexico. While we did find a number of restaurants, most of them were bars and diners. That is, with the exception of a bright white building with a neon sign on the front corner of the restaurant. We drove by it a couple times and my wife looked it up on her phone. It turns out the restaurant - Scalo - was a contemporary Italian eatery. We were certainly up for Italian food - we were sort of burnt out from eating New Mexican-style food for the previous five or six days - and we decided to go to Scalo for dinner.
A trio of partners opened Scalo (which roughly means "stopover place" in English) as a Northern Italian restaurant in December of 1986 in Albuquerque's historic Nob Hill neighborhood. From all indications, the trio continued to run the restaurant for the next nearly 20 years before it was purchased by Albuquerque restaurateur Steve Paternoster. Paternoster was raised in Northern Michigan, but spent a lot of time at his father's neighborhood bar in El Paso, TX. With Northern Italian ancestry on his mother's side, he learned a lot of the recipes and traditions that helped him later in life. Paternoster ran a bar in Gallup, NM before he became an airline host where he forged a number of relationships that helped him ease into the restaurant business. After a stint in hotel management, he and his wife Jane moved to Albuquerque In addition to Scalo, Paternoster was also a partner in two other upper echelon restaurants in Albuquerque - P'tit Louis Bistro and Brasserie La Provence.
Things were going well for Paternoster until the late 2010's when a series of personal, professional and structural set backs were the cause of the closure of Scalo. Paternoster turned over ownership of Scalo to his ex-wife and there was hope that the restaurant would reopen. It didn't.
Enter Prashant and Kristie Sawant.
The Sawants were technical engineers for over 20 years. It turned out that they liked to travel a lot and they followed their passion by finding some of the best restaurants and wines around the world. The Sawants spent the bulk of their time in Europe - especially in Italy - learning about the food, culture and wines of the region. The couple had moved to Albuquerque years before and thought of Scalo as "their place" for date nights and special occasions.
When the opportunity to purchase Scalo came up in 2019, the Sawants jumped at the chance. The first thing they did was to do a wholesale renovation of the restaurant. Infrastructure problems led to the demise of the original restaurant, so the couple spent thousands of dollars getting the building back up to code while maintaining the intimacy the original Scalo held.
After some starts and stops due to the pandemic, Scalo opened for full business in the summer of 2021. The original chef was from Northern Italy, but he was soon replaced by David Ruiz, a graduate of the California Culinary Academy. Ruiz kept some of the items on the menu from the original Scalo Northern Italian restaurant, but also came up with some new modern twists on some of the Italian favorites.
We pulled up to Scalo around 7 p.m. (see map) There is a parking lot next to the place, but it was full. We ended up parking along a residential street about a block and a half away from the restaurant. We walked up to Scala and they had live music playing in the outdoor patio area. The patio was packed on a beautiful evening in New Mexico.
The entrance of Scalo takes you into the bar area. It was a pretty cool lounge with an impressive amount of liquor selections on the wall of the back bar. A hostess asked us if we had reservations and, of course, we did not. She told us that we had choices - wait 15 to 20 minutes for a table to open in the dining room, wait 30 to 45 minutes for a table to open on the patio, or have immediate seating in the bar area. There were a number of high-top tables in the bar and open seats at the bar. I asked if we could take a look in the dining room and the hostess led us through a passage was that opened into the dining room. I told my wife, "It's your decision." She said that we could wait for a table to open up in there. We went up to the bar to order something for us to drink while we waited, but before the bartender could wait on us, the hostess came over and said that she could seat us immediately.
The dining room was a large, airy room with an open kitchen under a tiled arch. There was an upstairs porch area that looked out over the dining room with a small walk-up seating area along the kitchen. The hostess tried to seat us in the little walk-up area at a table with banquette seating. I immediately balked - I HATE banquette seating. I want a table with chairs, not communal bench seats and chairs. My wife pointed out a two-seater table next to the window that looked out onto Central Ave. "You want to sit there," she asked somewhat incredulously. At that point, anything other than a table with banquette seating was acceptable.
After the hostess dropped off menus for us, our server that evening - Sergio - came over to greet us. "I'll be right back, folks," he said somewhat hurriedly, but in an earnest fashion. "I'll let you get settled in while I take care of a couple things." It turned out that Sergio was an excellent server all night long. Originally from California, he settled in New Mexico a number of years ago. "A lot of people are coming to New Mexico from California and Colorado," he told us later in the night. "I made the move long before the new wave of people moved in."
The food menu at Scalo could be described as "new world" Italian. There wasn't a lot on the menu that featured Southern Italy-style red sauce, nor was there anything on the menu that featured Northern Italian white sauces. They had a Scottish-salmon entree available, as well as a shrimp, salmon belly, and fried calamari with risotto dish on the menu. Scalo had flatbread pizzas as well as a 12-hour braised short rib offered that evening. It was a short menu and we figured that everything had to be locally-sourced and very fresh.
We started out sharing a dinner salad consisting of fresh arugula and romaine greens with chopped Finnocchiona salami with cherry tomatoes, green olives, pepperoncini, and shaved pecorino romano cheese finished with a rosé vinaigrette. My wife was hungry and I let her eat more than I did. She thought the salad was delicious. There were a lot of taste sensations going on with each bite.
My wife was in the mood for white wine that evening, but I was leaning more for a red wine with my meal. She ended up getting a glass of the Thresher sauvignon blanc from Chile. I decided on the Santa Christina red blend from Italy.
I was sort of torn between the veal piccata and the beef cheek ravioli that they had on the menu that evening. My wife - since she was going with a white wine - decided to get the veal piccata and I went with the ravioli. The veal piccata was drizzled with a lemon sauce with capers. Risotto came on the side with the veal cutlet. Since I almost got the same dish, my wife offered a bite. The veal was tender and the lemon sauce was outstanding. But it didn't overpower the flavor of the veal.
The beef cheek ravioli was unique. Instead of a marinara sauce, the ravioli was mixed in a somewhat sweet and savory sauce. Arugula and shredded parmesan topped the large beef-filled ravioli pillows. I was sort of surprised that it wasn't a marinara sauce, but I have to say that it was a welcome surprise with the rustic Italian sauce they used. A forward-tasting marinara may have masked the great taste of the beef cheek embedded in the ravioli.
After dinner, Sergio brought the dessert menu, in addition to a cannoli and an affagato - salted caramel gelato topped with espresso - they had tiramisu. I really wanted to get the salted caramel gelato, but my wife wanted the tiramisu. "Is it made in house," she asked Sergio?
He replied, "It's Chef's own recipe. It's really good." She went with the tiramisu.
And it was very good - rich, sweet, savory, just a taste explosion with each bite. It was a great ending to what turned out to be a great meal.
Things had settled down by the time we were finishing up our dessert that Sergio was able to spend some time talking with us. We told him that we were a little burned out New Mexican-style food, even though most of the places we had visited up to that point were great. He gave us some great recommendations of places to eat while we were in Albuquerque. "There's some really good places that aren't New Mexican-style restaurants in Albuquerque, he said. It was great to talk with him and to learn stuff about the area only locals would know.
For trying Scalo on a whim, I have to say that we hit the jackpot. Sometimes walking into place we know nothing about works, sometimes it doesn't. This time, it definitely worked. Everything about the place - the decor and ambiance, the food and especially the service was outstanding. It was easy to see why the place was packed inside and out when we were there that evening. For wanting to step away from New Mexican-style food for a night, Scalo delivered - and then some!
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