Restaurant Review

Carlo’s Cucina Italiana
131 Brighton Ave.
Allston, MA 02143
(617) 254-9759

I bet eating a fine meal while looking out the window at deep-green olive speckled hills of Italy is an experience so wonderful that once enjoyed, people spend years trying to recreate it. I’m betting on this because hundreds of Italian restaurants I’ve been to have made attempts to recreate this scene, using the ever popular art form, the crappy wall mural.

Somehow though, these fake windows, badly painted columns and wall covering murals, which seem to be duplicated exactly from one restaurant the next, fail to conjure the awe and satisfaction of a sunset on the Italian landscape, they leave me with more of a feeling of wonder, as in, I wonder why people continue to think this is a good idea.

The confusing thing is that this practice isn’t confined to places like the Papa Gino’s in my home town strip mall, where I would expect tasteless decoration, but otherwise classy restaurants with much better food, like Carlo’s Cucina Italiana on Brighton Ave in Allston.

Carlo’s is small and cozy restaurant, with about twenty small tables in one small room. When you walk in the hostess is hidden behind the curtain and while you wait for a table you can enjoy pressing up against the other soon to be diners in the telephone booth-sized foyer. We walked in without a reservation on a Saturday night around six and were seated in just a few minutes. There was a larger party of about ten in the back, so the restaurant was clearly willing to make accommodations for larger groups, although given its size I would definitely call ahead.

The tables are simple and the chairs are simple and the crowd seemed like families and couples on dates, with plenty of lively conversation filling the room. There is a well rounded menu with a good offering of pastas and entrees, ranging from $12 to $20. The menu includes all of the Italian staples.

We started with a house salad ($4.95), the vegetables were fresh and the portion was enough for the two of us to split and still be satisfied. The dressing came in a red wine vinegar dressing with salt and pepper, which was simple and light but absolutely delicious. The restaurant also provided bread and olive oil that was of the highest quality.

For an entrée I had the special, a pork tenderloin ($20.95) with walnuts, dates, pears, and apples in a Madeira honey sauce. The fruit and the sauce were excellent, the cooking had baked the fruit into a soft warm pieces and the smoky heavy sauce was also excellent. The only downside was the meat, which was too dry and a little overcooked.

We also had the chicken parm ($13.95) that came with a side of ziti (almost all of the entrees come with the pasta side dish). The red sauce was great, and the ziti was cooked al dente perfectly. When they say parm, they mean it; there is tons of cheese on the dish.

We washed down the food with glasses of the house chianti and pinot grigio ($5.95 each), and for house wine these glasses were really tasty. The people next to us enjoyed their food too, a fact we discussed with them, because really, we were sitting together. Our table had as much space between theirs as I manage to find on the Red Line during rush hour. So to call the setting intimate might be a misnomer, unless you are into group intimacy.

At one point the people next to us were leaving, a process that required our standing and letting them pass. Again when our new neighbors came, they we rose to allow them to enter, a sort of seventh inning stretch, which hopefully allowed us to digest the food a bit, to handle the generous portions. I didn’t mind, but I can think of plenty of people I know who probably wouldn’t have stuck around to sit back down.

The food is great, even if the crowded atmosphere and décor doesn’t match it. The meal for two with a salad and two glasses of wine came out to a little over $50, and the restaurant is right in the heart of Allston, meaning there is easy access to the neighborhoods bars and entertainment.