- Restaurant of the Month: Pesto Ristorante
- Vincenzo Belvito has been cooking since he was a youngster,
helping his
- mother in the kitchen in Italy, and his experience shows. Belvito
opened
- Pesto Ristorante at 2915 Connecticut Ave., NW, in Woodley Park
in December
- 2002. The executive chef now not only cooks but handles
- all the other details associated with running a restaurant. Belvito
learned
- to cook at a five-year trade school he attended as a teen in
Italy. He held
- cooking jobs throughout Europe before coming to Dallas, where he
opened a restaurant
- years ago. He cooked in Miami and Denver before coming to
- Washington, D.C., several years ago, with the goal of opening a
restaurant.
- Pesto Ristorante features tasty pasta, fresh fish and a variety
of meat
- dishes, and has an excellent wine list. And now, it's 100% smoke
free.
- Pesto Ristorante
- 2915 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
- This unpretentious restaurant near the Cleveland Park Metro
serves simple Italian cuisine at a moderate price. It's kid-
friendly, casual and not far from the zoo. It's a good place to
catch an early dinner before returning to Foggy Bottom to get
ready for Monumental Celebration.
- The traditional Italian dishes range in price from $10 to $12,
and you can certainly get a two-course meal for under $20.
Dishes are well portioned, and most of the food is prepared in a
more authentic Italian fashion - light, without overdoing the
heavy creamy sauces.
- Aside from the rigatoni, ravioli and gnocchi dishes, Pesto also
serves fish and a 10-oz. Steak meal.
- Pesto's dining rooms are simply decorated making it a cozy,
homey atmosphere suitable for groups, families and children.
- A Second to the Post review
- Posted by anonymous on Oct 09, 2003
- I was really happy to finally see a review of Pesto in the Post.
The Post's review is on the mark. I've been going to our
neighborhood restaurant pretty much since it opened, and have
tried and enjoyed everything on the menu. While the review
notes the cannoli (which is terrific as is the tiramisu), the review
doesn't mention the specials. They are always a pleasant
surprise. In fact, I often don't get to order from the main
menu because of the various specials. The specials usually include
a soup or appetizer, pasta and meat entry. The soups really are
truly special. Particularly I like the roasted garlic and portabella
mushroom. And none of them are cream based (Yeah!). Finally,
as warm and good Pesto is, the experience keeps getting better
the more you go. Highly recommended.
- AOL City Guide, 2003
- Gourmands from Georgetown to Genoa would certainly feel at
home at Pesto Ristorante, a delightful and tasteful revamp of
what used to be Mrs. Simpson's, but you get the impression that
the locals want to keep this gem to themselves. It's no wonder.
Here Vincenzo Belvito, who has been at the helm of La Tomate
and Galileo, has created a delicious tribute to that fine Italian
herb: basil. Which explains why menu choices include tagliatelle
with pesto and grilled salmon with basil. Belvito eschews cream
and butter for his exquisite pasta, seafood and meat dishes,
including seared sea bass and braised lamb and veal. Instead,
entrees are prepared with premium olive oils and herbs. The
quality in the kitchen extends to the breads and pasta that are
made on the premises.
- By Eve Zibart
- Washington Post Staff Writer
- Friday, October 10, 2003
- Simplicity is undervalued. In a time when "Italian cuisine"
comprises such extravagant gestures as an imposingly vertical
construct of tournedos Rossini (at Maestro) and anise-flavored
wood pigeons (at Galileo Laboratorio), a modestly precise dish of
fresh housemade fettuccine just slicked with pesto is more than a
forgotten pleasure, it's a spiritual palate cleanser -- an
opportunity to luxuriate in the texture, tease apart the cousinly
flavors of basil and pignoli nuts and clear your head with the
scent of grinding pepper.
- Pesto is, to use an almost unavoidable pun, the entree into Pesto,
Woodley Park's latest Italian hideaway. Owner Vincenzo Belvito,
has turned the former Mrs. Simpson's space into what might have
been the late duchess of Windsor's palazzo patio, with an arched
sienna-and-sun-colored wall describing a bar in the front room .
Many of the old photos and "woman I love" memorabilia remain,
though considering Wallis Simpson's famously lean silhouette, it's
hard to imagine her tucking into much in the way of pasta. The
somewhat over shiny reproduction tin ceiling is perhaps a little
odd, but the sense of snug neighborhood informality is, if
anything, even stronger. (The somewhat more elegant lower dining
room tends to open only on busy weekend nights.)
- Most noticeably, however, Pesto is not trying to be smart -- just
intelligent. The smallish kitchen, from which Belvito frequently
emerges to greet regulars, keeps from overreaching by
emphasizing what can be best handled in-house (such as the flat
noodles, ravioli, etc.). Creaminess is nearly unknown here in the
sense of heavy sauces (with the notable exception of a
Gorgonzola gnocchi that would stuff the worst of winter colds),
and the olive oil is dispensed as a condiment, not a cover up.
Portions are correct; that is, modest to most American eyes, but
quite authentic and perfectly satisfying. The prices are similarly
well-behaved, with the pastas in the $10 to $12 range, putting a
satisfying two-course meal into the under-$20 category. And
the sincerely relaxed and friendly staff is a true relief from the
often overly self-conscious, cutesy or anachronistically haughty
servers who so often spoil a night out. (It was hard to tell who
was prouder of Belvito's inaugural cannoli, the owner or the
waitress.)
- Appetizers are generally light rather than rich. Eggplant
involtini, sliced clean-flesh fruit wrapped around good mozzarella
and just a scent of prosciutto, is as delicate a version as can be
produced. A grilled portobello dolloped with goat cheese is not
unusual, but memorable because the mushroom was in fact
charred rather than just warmed (and with the essential grain or
two of salt). The carpaccio was straightforward, but left just
thick enough to retain its flavor. (Washington has been plagued
recently by overenthusiastic prep cooks pounding already delicate
meat right into neutrality and near-invisibility.) Even the Caesar
salad, a dish so deformed by contemporary health concerns and
sheer incompetence that it's all but lost any attraction, was a
fair reminder of better days, with just a tang of anchovy
smeared into the (yes! Egg!) dressing and the romaine's slight
bitterness tangible beneath.
- Belvito wisely limits the pastas and entrees to a half-dozen each,
and perhaps just coincidentally, prepares many of the simpler
classics in a fashion that shows up the duller, weightier chain-
restaurant versions: capellini in a still barely textured tomato
sauce, penne with a spicy and lightly sour caper sauce, and a
comforting veal tortellini with tomato cream. The various ravioli
-- stuffed with rich and sweet butternut squash or with a simple
spinach-ricotta blend -- are as light as the fettuccine, perfectly
cooked (i.e., four seconds beyond the too common over-dente
that leaves a burr of semolina on the tongue). A fine little baby
snapper fillet was perfectly seasoned, just crisped and very
moist, though the "balsamic reduction" hadn't lost much weight
since its bottling. Grilled salmon can be fine or frowsty, but
here, presented with basil instead of the more common dill or
trendy chard, it showed off its secret hint of sweetness. For
unrepentant carnivores, there is a 10-ounce strip steak, which at
$18 tops the price curve, but reasonably.
- Cooler weather has persuaded Belvito to assay a lamb shank
ossobuco, a sage- and prosciutto-draped saltimbocca and such
specials as a fine, flavorful but delicate veal-stuffed cannelloni.
- The wine list is geared to a regular but not overly demanding
audience (the wine-by-the-glass choices could be much improved,
however). Still, Pesto is a fine addition to the neighborhood, a
quiet, happy and persuasively homey dining room.
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