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One of the downsides of being a restaurant reporter is that when there's a night off from a planned meal out, we usually want to cook something at home--whether simple or complex. This probably sounds like a strange complaint to some, but we rarely go out and eat "critique-free," and when we do, we prefer little Asian restaurants.
That said, we appreciated the chance to revisit Barolo (they performed well in a Sound Dish-Off earlier this year) without expectation to write about it. Then we were surprised to like it so much that we feel compelled to tell you why.
The reason: Branzino alle Olive Bianche e Pomodori Appassiti. The rest of the food that evening was fabulous, and we ate a lot without feeling overstuffed, but this Chilean sea bass dish was something special. Perfectly cooked (and while we love fish, it takes a lot to impress us), with the Castelvetrano olives imparting a perfect briny-ness and the tomato confit packing a powerful "out of season" tomato taste.
Barolo's a beautiful place, but for us, the plate's more important to the place. We're pleased to report that the branzino is a thing of beauty. And it's on the menu for the rest of the month.
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Recently had a chance to dine at Barolo for the first time. Zero expectations coming in, but the place was really noisy and we had to wait about 15-20 minutes for our already late table.
However, the food and service was wonderful. I've told many folks about it. Rare to be pleasantly surprised, including the price - expensive but not as bad as I expected
Sounds good, but I tend to avoid sea bass, since it's both overfished and high in mercury.
By all means - never have 'chilean seabass' - Patagonian toothfish. It is highly overfished (but tasty!)
I avoid Chilean sea bass because most of the fish comes into the US via a black-market trade. While I have never cooked it, I have heard it mentioned on Top Chef a few times that it is a VERY forgiving fish and doesn't take all to much skill to cook correctly.
So is 'branzino' Italian for 'sea bass?' I know Chilean sea bass was a made up name for the patagonian toothfish to make it more marketable. So marketable that it is now in the process of being fished out of existence.