OSTERIA DANTE
91 Broad St, Red Bank, NJ 07701
Authentic Italian cuisine is simply divine

By Andrea Clurfeld
DINING COMPANION
ASBURY PARK PRESS

"There is an old man, maybe 80 years old, sitting in a beam ceilinged ristorante in the Veneto eating his daily polenta. He's closing his eyes for a moment as he lets the cornmeal mash slide over his tongue, because today's polenta comes with duck livers, and the deeply sensuous, yet rough taste of the liver and its cooking juices gives the, polenta a startlingly rich character. He eats it plain, most of the time, or with vegetables or maybe with wild mushrooms (porcini!), so the fact that the kitchen did this luxurious little turn today pleases him.

You, the visitor to this region of Italy where more polenta is eaten than Anywhere else in Italy, watch this old man eating his polenta. Cornmeal and liver doesn't do it for you. Yet the solitary, gentleman's utter absorption in the act of eating, the way he moves fork to mouth, closes his eyes and lets every grain, every morsel dissolve before, ever so slowly, repeating the process, fascinates you. Cornmeal and livers? A joke, for sure.

The loss is yours, paesan, for this rustic dish isn't merely an acquired taste. It's as old as the hills sloping down to the Po River, and it's the dish that made me fall in love - at first bite - with Osteria Dante in Red Bank, NJ.

Soft polenta with duck livers! Right there on the menu of the new ristorante on Broad Street owned by Mike Bitici. I leaned across the table to my dining companions and told them we had to order the soft polenta with duck livers. What I didn't tell them was that it's the quintessential old man's dish, the kind of food you need to have lived to know and understand. And when our server, whimsical and flirtatious in a jolly Little Italy way, told us of the fresh grilled sardines in his detailed recitation of specials, I stopped the proceedings and said, yes, a must, and yes again. Osteria Dante clearly is no ordinary Jersey-suburban ristorante, but a kind of transplant from back-roads Italy, and I wanted to savor the most transporting dishes it had to offer.

Expect the authentic

Bitici calls it Mediterranean and, to be true, there's a bouillabaisse on the menu and maybe another dish or two more Med in spirit than heartfelt Italian. But I think the point he's trying to make in giving it that moniker is that Osteria Dante isn't what we in the Garden State know of as Italian, and he didn't want those wandering in expecting Americanized standards to be confused and disappointed.

I am exultant and quivering as I eat through our order in this slip of a storefront with a scenic mural as its primary adornment. I love the polenta, you know that already, but the fresh, plump, juice-squirting sardines, so simply grilled with a brush of olive oil, are the perfect opening-round counterpoint: Slightly, delightfully saline from the sea, with succulent flesh, I gladly finish off the generous portion more quickly than I know is polite.

We all inhale the tuna carpaccio, for this utterly simple, pristine raw-fish starter is impeccably plated with a tangle of fine greens and the best young Parmigiano-Reggiano I've had this side of the great pond. If you're used to supermarket shrink-wrapped P-R, the creamy freshness of this strictly regulated Italian cheese may startle you. So, too, might a special of skinny French string beans mingling with lush cannellini beans and amazingly tasty tomatoes in a spray of extra-virgin olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar. The secret here is a shopper's eye: Every ingredient was primo, with the quality of the oil and the vinegar unquestionably high. It matters, it sure does, and the folks at Osteria Dante know it.

They also know how to do pasta like the finest chefs in Italy do pasta. Penne, slender and perfectly al dente, are tossed in the barest tomato-scented broth with the improbable combination of slices of spicy baby okra and miniature nuggets of mango. A dusting of that impeccable Parmigiano Reggiano, unified the dish that exemplifies Italians' mastery of pasta and produce. Risotto, too, is exactly as it should be, tossed here with spinach, yellow squash and vaguely sweet, crunchy amaretti. Perfect, perfect!

Osso buco, with saffron-licked rice on the side, is true-blue red, white and green: Yes, it's meltingly tender, falling-off-the-bone wonderful, but what engaged my taste buds repeatedly was the purity of the stock that kept the veal shank moist during the long, slow cooking process. It must have been strained a half-dozen times to be that clean, that straightforward. The only dish I wouldn't have again here was another entree special, venison dappled most prominently with truffle oil. Nice, smartly cooked, very unfussy, the meat was excellent, but the dish didn't make me want to belt out an aria. Maybe I was miffed at myself for letting our charming server talk me out of the duck breast with oranges and figs.

But I was ready to try out for "Aida" as I ate the whole sea bass grilled with nothing but olive oil and rosemary branches. It's filleted table-side, and you're portioned out plenty of sweet fish meat. OK, I'll give this one to Bitici: This is fish Mediterranean-style, elemental, yet elegant.

Classics continue

Desserts follow form here. The panna cotta is classic, the "cooked cream" confection a wiggly, yummy, expertly crafted delight. I need to know: Is there a smidgen of sour cream in there, adding richness and sultriness? It's that seductive, this panna cotta. Zabaglione, very egg-yolky and Marsala-intense, is served cold, with a nourish of fresh strawberries, and it's divine, I like it so much better on its own than layered with ladyfingers in tiramisu. A dense chocolate torta, dusted with powdered sugar and served with a dollop of freshly whipped and sweetened cream on the side, has a miraculous lightness to it that makes me realize there's a wizard in the kitchen turning out this dessert.

Oh, yes, there are wizards in the kitchen of Osteria. Dante, but they're well-schooled in the divine simplicity of authentic regional Italian cuisine. They understand how beautiful basic can be, how sublime ingredients need no superfluous sauces or towering constructions to capture a diner's heart. The folks at Osteria Dante know what, too few, way too few, in the restaurant business at the Jersey Shore know: how to please an old man with a lifetime of fine eating experience under his belt."