Nessun Dorma Is a Rivewest Classic

Nessun Dorma. Photo by Cari Taylor-Carlson.

Nessun Dorma, named for a famous aria in Puccini’s opera Turandot, lived up to its name when a companion and I came for dinner on a Wednesday. We noticed a keyboard in the corner of the bar and to our surprise, at exactly 7:30, a young woman with blue hair dressed in jeans, a sweater, and boots, stepped up and began singing an aria. She had a beautiful voice that carried to the back where we were sitting. That delightful and serendipitous discovery was how we learned there will be opera to accompany your dinner every second and fourth Wednesday in this small Riverwest bar.

This was the beginning of a delightful rainy evening filled with good food and Italian opera. A basic menu offered bruschetta, salad, soup, antipasti, and nine paninis. We each ordered two different daily soups, spinach-squash and bacon-potato. Spinach and squash together suggested an odd combination but why not combine green and gold and then puree them to make a healthful broth to retain the flavors of both? Unlike the subtle spinach-squash soup, the potato soup was bold, thick, rich, filled with chunks of bacon and lots of melted cheese.

We followed our soup with a Puccini panini and an entrée-size beet and goat cheese salad. For the Puccini, the chef combined 6 oz. of sliced tenderloin with olive tapenade, grilled onions, peppers, and melted provolone. The thinly sliced tenderloin was delicate, beefy, and fork-tender as it should be. The spicy tapenade added a zesty flavor to the beef and the cheese. The sandwich came with a side salad dressed with the house balsamic vinaigrette, the same dressing the chef used on my beet and goat cheese salad.

The roasted beets in the salad were sliced and retained enough of their firm texture to intensify their earthy flavor. Dabs of creamy goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and very fresh greens dressed with the balsamic created a beet salad that you will want to repeat or perhaps, try to replicate at home.

I asked our server if I could please have some bread to accompany the salad and expected a couple of slices and maybe some butter. I did not anticipate two slices of homemade bread, toasted, and buttered, and served with a side salad. An unexpected classy touch to my meal.

If you want to start your meal with bruschetta, there are three choices, the “traditional” with tomato, pesto, and mozzarella, roasted beet with goat cheese, and the olive tapenade with Kalamata and Greek olives. All the bruschetta use the Tuscan bread, the same bread I enjoyed with my salad.

There are three antipasti choices, artichoke dip, assorted olives, and ciccio, the dish we had admired as we watched our server take it to the back room. This was an artist’s version of a platter filled with salami, pepperoni, assorted cheeses, olives, and more. Next time, we agreed.

There are three vegetarian paninis, an artichoke melt on asiago ciabatta, a portobella Mushroom with roasted peppers and provolone, and for cheese lovers, the formaggio, with roasted red pepper and four kinds of cheese.

Cheese also starred in the stuffed hash browns my companion ordered when friends and I came to Sunday brunch. This was a yummy stack of food beginning with crisp hash browns combined with cheesy sauteed peppers, onions, and bacon, and topped with two fried eggs and more cheese. If you’re not counting calories, how can that not be awesome? It was served with a side of fruit.

For my biscuits and gravy, I replaced the two fried eggs with roasted red potatoes. There were big chunks of sausage in the gravy that obscured one of the best biscuits I have ever had in a restaurant. A large flaky tender biscuit was topped with melted cheddar which made it an ideal host for the sausage-forward gravy and the roasted potatoes.

My companion’s biscuit sandwich, two cheddar-topped biscuits were filled with sausage patties, red pepper sriracha, and more cheddar. This feast came with roasted potatoes and a small bowl of fruit.

There is more to savor at brunch, with such dishes as huevos rancheros, a meat lover’s skillet, and a vegetarian skillet with vegan sausage.

All this good food came out of a small kitchen at the back of this cozy Riverwest bar. It looks like an ordinary bar, but it is a classy Italian bistro where the menu is brief, to the point, and from my experience, every dish is a winner.

On the Menu

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The Rundown

• Location: 2778 N. Weil St.
• Phone: 414-264-8466
• Hours: 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Tue-Fri, 10 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. Sat, 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. Sun
• Neighborhood: Riverwest
• Website: http://nessundormariverwest.com

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