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Northern Italian Exposure

F’Amelia serves up classic dishes in the heart of Cabbagetown

by Jon Sufrin

F'Amelia co-owner John Dawson (Image: Cheol Joon Baek)

A name like F’Amelia has that romantic, roll-off-your-tongue swagger that makes it sound like it means something in Italian, but it doesn’t. It’s a perfect name nonetheless for a new Cabbagetown restaurant.

This is familiar food, for families, on Amelia Street. Co-owner John Dawson (formerly of Leslieville’s Table 17) and his business partner, Todd Vestby, are gunning for a very broad market. They want to appeal to everyone. Here in Cabbagetown, amid a glut of convenience stores and Indian restaurants, families are coming to F’Amelia en masse.

There are a few reasons why this could be the case. For one, F’Amelia’s ambience is decidedly comfortable. The servers do their best to convince you that they know as much about each dish as the chef does (but when one tells you that the osso bucco is lamb, and another tells you it’s beef, you have to wonder). Most importantly, the food is simple, honest and unpretentious.

F’Amelia is also ambitious. In addition to its not-so-small menu of meats, seafood and northern Italian-inspired pastas — literally everything is made the hard way, in-house — F’Amelia is also doing authentic Neapolitan pizzas. It hopes to join Toronto’s elite group of pizzerias that have been officially certified by pizza oligarchs in Naples.

Grilled calamari (all food images by Evan Andrew Mackay)

But don’t expect pizzas that are as revelatory as Pizzeria Libretto’s can be. The Margherita here ($13.50) is good, but the crust is dry, not elastic and moist, like Libretto’s, and the dough needs more salt. The locals don’t seem to mind one bit. F’Amelia churns out pizzas to go, even when it’s a packed house. And throughout the night, pizzaiolos cook up pizza dough bread sprinkled with sea salt and rosemary. It’s served warm — and free — to patrons who need to sop up some extra sauce from their plates. It’s a fantastic perk.

With so much going on, it’s no wonder that a salumi plate ($20) takes forever to come out. When it arrives, it’s worth it. Executive chef Maurizio Verga, who spent four years as sous chef at Splendido, has been dealing with salumi since he was a kid. This salumi plate is a playground of flavour combinations: pancetta is spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg; salami is infused with fennel. A fluffy chicken liver mousse could have come straight from the Black Hoof (in fact, it did: that’s where the cook behind this item hails from).

That kind of sweeping flavour spectrum seems to be the exception to the rule at F’Amelia. The gnocchi ($22) is millimetres away from perfection, but there’s no kick; earthy flavours are too dominant. It’s a small misstep considering the way the rest of the dish pulls through: it’s inundated with chubby porcini mushrooms — as juicy as berries — that have been sautéed in butter and brandy. The house-made gnocchi dumplings are ethereal. They hold together on your fork, then turn to cream in your mouth.

Gnocchi with porcini mushrooms

The lamb sausages ($28) have a lot less going on. Although the filling is finely, consistently minced and the casing is so firm that it snaps (the sure sign of a proper, natural casing), the sausages somehow end up tasting almost exactly like the caponata that they’re served on. The dish tastes like a stew, but too mundane to be a good option for winter.

Tiramisù ($8) is satisfactory, if forgettable.

The strong point of F’Amelia’s fare is its textures. Chef Verga deserves a standing ovation for them. Grilled calamari ($17) is butter-tender. Saffron risotto ($22) is perfectly al dente, topped with soft braised osso bucco (probably beef) and not-too-crunchy carrots. The flavours, meanwhile, have such a populist appeal to them that few will leave disappointed, though not many will have their minds blown.

F’Amelia is everything a family restaurant should be: it’s safe, reliable and casual. My imaginary Nonna gives it her seal of approval.

F’Amelia, 12 Amelia St., 416-323-0666

This article appears in the November 2011 issue of Post City Magazines