Rustic Italian

First Published in The Edge Malaysia, Options, 10 January, 2015

A corner of rustic Italy thrives in the midst of high-rise KL.

The building complex of Plaza Damas 3, opposite the established Plaza Damas complex, is quiet on weekends, as it is occupied by commercial businesses, except for one corner of the building.  This small corner with an outdoor dining area squeezed into the walkway, is Icook Italian Gastronomia, the second outlet after the one in Petaling Jaya. Unlike that outlet, however, this one serves pork.

This isn’t like the usual Italian restaurant that you encounter in KL. When you enter through the glass doors, the restaurant strikes you with its homely atmosphere.  It’s small and crowded, but still accommodates a half-dozen plain pale wood tables and chairs. There’s a wine cooler backed up against the far wall, and the kitchen is just beside the door. 

A brick pizza oven occupies one far corner, enclosed within the supplementary area where fresh juices and drinks are made.   Tables are without tablecloths, menus are plain printed brown paper which double up as placemats.

The day’s specials are handwritten on red tape stuck to a glass panel, and opposite there’s a bright red wall, hand-chalked with freshly-made pasta choices.  Two hulking gentlemen in black are the chef and owner Nicola Carradori and his assistant Francesco. The two occasionally gabble on in voluble Italian between preparing the food.  The place is intimate, familiar and informal – you could easily be overdressed here, and the crowd – and there is a crowd, with reserved tables and people sitting outside – is mainly family. 

Posters of Italian country marketplaces adorn the walls, making the busy place look even busier. In Italy, an eatery like this is called a trattoria, an informal dining place, typically a neighbourhood restaurant, with earthy, accessible food, unlike the ristorante, which is more formal with full service, linen napkins and haute cuisine.

The menu is bewilderingly extensive, with Starters, Salads, Soups, Pastas, Risotto, Pizza and Oven baked dishes, and that’s before considering the day’s specials and Desserts, which are also handwritten on red tape and stuck to the glass wall.  The Pasta section alone offers spaghetti, gnocchis, fettucines, penne, ear shell pasta, linguine and Ligurian pasta, and there is something like a dozen different pizza types. Mains include everything from King Prawns, Seabass, Chicken, Pork belly, Rib-Eye Steak to vegetarian choices, so it would be hard to imagine someone not finding something to his or her liking.

You can watch everything being prepared at the kitchen, and the feeling is almost like eating in someone’s home, but that’s the whole point. Naturally, we had to try the freshly-made pastas.

A wicker basket with warm bread slices and a saucer of oil with balsamic vinegar, seasoned with garlic and rosemary, provided diversion while waiting for the food, which arrived quickly.

The starter of Capesante Dello Chef (Rm28.90) was presented with no pretension: a clump of mash embedded with three large pan seared scallops and sprinkled over with pork pancetta, and a drizzle of oil.  The mash was cauliflower with butter; lighter than mashed potatoes and with a mild flavour, it was made all the more wholesome by pork pancetta, often called “Italian bacon”.  Salted and cured, pancetta has a deep flavour quite distinct from English-style bacon.  The scallops were fat and lovely and the whole starter oozed with a sort of country-style goodness.

The Avocado E Scampi (Rm22.90) salad featured cut cherry tomatoes, rocket, onion, a half avocado and prawns dressed in a thousand-island like dressing.  Not as richly sinful as you might have expected, with the rocket adding a welcome bitterness to temper the creamy avocado and pink mayonnaise.

Some of the fresh pastas had run out, but we both ordered Tagliatelle.  My order of Black Tagliatelle with Spicy Seafood in Tomato Sauce (Rm36.90) was a large portion, with thick ribbons of not-quite-black tagliatelle, generous servings of black mussels, clams, squid, prawns and a sprinkling of herbs in a tomato sauce.  The tagliatelle brought home the hearty nature of the food, with the freshly-made tomato sauce, and the varied mix of seafood, but the prawns weren’t quite fresh. Advertised as spicy seafood, to a Malaysian, the spicy element was vanishingly mild.  Otherwise, this was a simple, filling offering.

The other main, the Tagliatelle with Black Mussels, Cherry Tomato, Chilli in White Wine sauce (Rm36.90) was a permutation of the earlier main.  The plain tagliatelle was almost indistinguishable, taste-wise, from the black tagliatelle and equally robust. There were bits of brocolli and carrot with the white wine sauce, which was heavily flavoured with herbs and garlic, but the sauce transformed this into a completely different interpretation from the tomato-sauce version.  More subtle and natural than the tomato-flavoured dish, this was perhaps the more appealing version despite being less flavourful. 

Finally, for dessert, we shared a tiramisu (Rm14.90) which was sweetly sophisticated and nicely balanced between the different flavours and textures, but it was conventionally presented and almost disappointing in that respect, after the rustic presentations of the earlier orders.

Icook Italian Gastronomia is the sort of place where the owner and chef comes over to shake your hand, thank you personally, ask your name and if everything was OK.  It’s almost like the Italian version of the bar where everyone knows your name, it has that familiar, worn feeling where you come for good conversation and company. Come for the hearty portions of freshly-made food, and for the sense of having wandered, quite by accident, into a rustic restaurant in a small market village someplace in rural Italy, but don’t expect stylish Italian sophistication and obscure regional specialties – this is wholesome, heartland Italian food.

Icook Italian Gastronomia,

A-05, Plaza Damas 3, Taman Sri Hartamas,

50460 Malaysia. 

Phone: 03-62114000

Email	icookitalian.gastronomia@gmail.com facebook: icook Italian gastronomia Open daily except Monday, from 1145am-3pm, 5pm-10.30pm