Apertivo

We are NOW available for Catering and Party Platters

All of us at Apertivo would like to invite you to visit our restaurant in North Park, San Diego for Wine and Italian Tapas. We’ve all been to restaurants that make you pick one huge trough of food when what you really want is a little taste of several different dishes. This is what we are trying to remedy here at Apertivo. All our food is appetizer size portions of Italian inspired dishes made from the freshest and highest quality ingredients available, no preservatives, no MSG, no partially hydrogenated oils and minimally processed. All our food is handmade here. We hope you feel like you’ve visited our home for dinner and a glass of wine. All our wines are reasonably priced because we believe that wine shouldn’t be pretentious or intimidating, accessibility is the keyword. Nothing on the menu has more than three to four ingredients; we think the food should speak for itself. We use only extra virgin olive oil in all of our foods and try at all times to evoke the spirit of true Mediterranean cuisine, clean, fresh, and simple. Only the best produce we can buy will be served and will change with the seasons. We hope you enjoy having a real meal with us in a relaxed atmosphere and look forward to having you over for dinner at Apertivo.

Dining
Epicurious Eating: Apertivo
Hard to resist, easy on the wallet
by Frank Sabatini Jr.
Published Thursday, 16-Dec-2004 in issue 886
“You can’t even buy a salad at Jack-in-the-Box for these prices!” exclaimed one of my dining cohorts as we gawked over the menu at the new Apertivo. It was as though we were reading a serious misprint. Italian tapas such as Shrimp Scampi, Chicken Parmesan and Grilled Portobello Mushrooms all priced in the low single digits for under $6 apiece? The portions must be microscopic, we thought. Suddenly a $3 antipasto flew by us. “That doesn’t look so small,” noted my other dining companion. “And I’m sure I saw meat and cheese in it,” he blurted.

Still skeptical, we ordered it along with two other salads also costing $3 each. Had we not been a trio, I could have gotten fat on greens. The antipasto, though served on a pie-size plate, sported plenty of mozzarella and diced salami for the price. The arugula salad with crumbled Gorgonzola and sweet onions was also satisfying. Ditto for the spinach salad with bits of hard-boiled egg. Sharing was believing.

Chef Ken Cassinelli and his wife, Janie Losli, are seemingly giving away their Italian-tapas restaurant since opening last month. But Cassinelli says, “The numbers are working out” when referring to his bottom line. He also notes that overhead is low, given the fact Losli waits on tables and there isn’t much else of a staff. Faced with such bargain prices, we ordered lawlessly. From the meat lineup, we tried the Grilled Chicken Breast ($4), a simple but delicious filet served in a puddle of olive oil with parsley and a slice of lemon. A couple of meatballs for a buck apiece proved tasty, too. In fact it’s the first turkey meatball I’ve consumed that almost fooled me into thinking I was eating beef. And an order of six Grilled Shrimp ($5) ranked among our favorites, given their succulent charred flavor.

There was little semblance to the influx of food to our table. But part of the fun with tapas is that you eat in the order they’re received. A generous serving of Roasted Red Peppers ($2), however, could have been better utilized at the beginning of our repast for pairing up with the chicken or salads. And we weren’t expecting them to be served chilled. Although a nice plate of mixed olives for the same price – some pitted, some not – kept us picking from beginning to end, as did the complimentary warm, soft breadsticks served with extra-creamy Darigold Butter.

It soon became evident that Cassinelli draws from his half-Italian decent when cooking, as the food doesn’t struggle to capture the rustic flavors of Italy. The Eggplant Parmesan ($4) steers clear of the mushy, over-cheesed version I find in other restaurants. And the marinara sauce, used also on the meatballs, tastes pure and fresh.

From the pasta category I can’t recommend enough the Puttanesca. For a measly $4 you get a quaint serving of spaghetti, capellini, linguine or penne dressed in a thin tomato sauce that mingles lovingly with capers, anchovies and olives. Top it off with a few shakes of grated Romano cheese from the table and say hello to heaven.
Pasta prices cap off at $6 if you opt for the Vongole sauce, made with clams, garlic and olive oil. It’s the most expensive item on the menu. For a couple bills less, the Pesto we ordered was of fine pedigree. Cassinelli omits the pine nuts, which allows the basil to blossom. And the Fettucini Alfredo was standard tasting, if not a tad light on the cream and cheese.
Cassinelli intends to expand the menu soon, although we found plenty of adequate choices that also included Fried Calamari, Lasagna, Roasted Potatoes, Italian Greens and several other pasta plates.

A wine bar stocked mostly with Italian labels resides along the back wall of the open dining room, which might cry for soundproofing on busy nights. The casual atmosphere is nonetheless comfy and especially enjoyable if Cassinelli comes out of the kitchen to schmooze. His enthusiasm for this first-time restaurant venture is as contagious as the food he serves.

From the dessert cache you’ll find homemade Chocolate Mousse Pie ($3) made with Ghirardelli chocolate, mini Canoli ($2), tri-colored Spumoni ice cream ($3) and a decadent Lemon Cheese Cake Mousse topped with blueberries ($3).

It’s all good, especially when you consider that nowhere in San Diego can you shovel down so many little meals for such a minor blow to the wallet.

Epicurious Eating:
Apertivo Italian Tapas and Wine Bar
Apertivo: more breadth for the buck
by Frank Sabatini
Published Thursday, 25-Oct-2007 in issue 1035
After visiting Apertivo when it first opened about three years ago, I remember feeling pretty convinced that the unselfish portion sizes of its Italian tapas would eventually shrink and that its low price points would spike ridiculously. Anyone who knows firsthand a restaurant owner’s struggle to preserve the bottom line would have surely agreed.

Having peeked in last week with a friend, I was proven wrong. Pity those who flock to places like the Olive Garden for salty and overpriced sub-standard Italian dishes. Apertivo’s food not only carries more breadth and passion than ever before, it’s still a giveaway bargain with decent-sized plates costing a mere $8 at most.

The restaurant’s menu, wine list and wait staff have expanded, as well as the space itself. Owners Ken Cassinelli and his wife, Janie, cut into an adjoining storefront earlier this year, allowing for more tables, a bigger kitchen and an extra restroom. But in the slothful city bureaucracy that plagues so many mom-and-pop restaurateurs seeking booze permits, customers must stick to the original dining area or back-wall wine bar to drink adult beverages until a license is granted to serve them throughout the entire room. The night we visited, only the handful of tables in the “dry side” of the restaurant remained largely empty.

I had forgotten how much I loved Apertivo’s pasta puttanesca until twirling my fork again in the mound of spaghetti laced with capers, black olives, tomatoes and anchovies that are melted into an olive oil base. Also extraordinary is the Caesar salad of all things – thanks to a rich, garlicky dressing thickened by wet crumbles of Parmesan cheese. And the marinara here is bright and basic, an accurately fast-cooked sauce using basil, garlic, red wine and whole tomatoes that Cassinelli squishes by hand.

Some of Cassinelli’s recipes originate from his grandmother. Others stem from an intuitive, charged-up knack for cooking.

“I’m an addict for food and started cooking in the third grade,” he said. “I grew up watching Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet.”

Nothing we ate descended even remotely into the mediocre zone. Prosciutto-wrapped shrimp, for instance, develops a beautiful sheath of crispiness as the thinly sliced ham hits the pan of heated olive oil. It’s a superior rendition of bacon-wrapped shrimp that I’ve had in other restaurants, where the crustaceans become invariably upstaged by the bacon’s saltiness. Cassinelli has figured out that subtler prosciutto is the wiser choice, earning him a recipe mention in Deliciously Italian, a nationally released cookbook celebrating traditional family recipes.

Three splendid items we tried from the list of daily specials were braised leeks in béchamel sauce revealing a whisper of nutmeg. Rarely do I see leeks on local menus, so their earthy, scallion-like flavor was a welcome treat. Equally wowing was chunky tenderloin in a judiciously creamy ragu served over a choice of pasta. The recipe puts all other meat “sauces” to shame, and I would rally to see this dish promoted to permanent status on the regular menu before somebody steals it. Ditto for the Bosc pear poached in Marsala wine that we had for dessert, appointed in an oh-so-fitting Gorgonzola cream sauce.

“Nona Serventi’s” homemade ravioli pays tribute to grandma, who taught Cassinelli the art of making thin sheets of egg pasta for creating super lightweight casings. Inside was a modest layering of ricotta and chopped spinach. On top were plops of the cherry-red marinara that I could eat as soup.

Pliant, warm goat cheese served as the filler for baked eggplant rollotini, a more exciting choice compared to everyday eggplant Parmesan. Our manicotti tasted classic, although the tubes were rather heavily mantled by Mozzarella. And ranking among my favorite dishes was chicken diablo hiding tender pieces of breast meat in a dark-red sauce of sun-dried tomatoes and red chili flakes. Here, the sauce is cooked to just the burning point to add an indirect smoky zing.

Since these are not what I’d call pigmy tapas, we never got around to ordering lamb shank osso bucco, which I’ve been told by friends is extraordinary. Nor did we indulge in the turkey meatballs. I ate those with glee on my initial visit and was happy to see them still in the offing for only a buck a ball.

Among our lighter choices were marinated baby artichokes imported from southern Italy. They actually weren’t so petite, but rather medium-sized bulbous gems with delicate brine permeating their soft, meaty hearts. Sweet roasted red peppers struck a wholesome match to the complimentary bread sticks, or you can pair them ideally with mixed olives, oven-roasted carrots or crimini mushrooms sautéed in sherry.

Pasta choices abound with about 15 types of sauces and toppings suitable for marriage to five different cuts of noodles. Chicken, too, comes in several styles – Parmesan, piccata, marsala or plainly grilled.

The red wines we sampled (some local and others Italian) offered good complexity and discernible fruit. There are about 60 labels available by the glass, all affordably priced, along with a few Italian beers.

Much has been said about the noise level when Apertivo fills up. I wasn’t bothered by it this time around because the din was festive in a communal “eat, drink and be happy” sense. Service was speedier and smoother than what I remember. And for the first time in ages, I came away from a local Italian restaurant that replaces slapdash slop with veritable heart and soul.