In the early days of my time with Tom, I remember him speaking of a restaurant he liked which was a sister restaurant to another northshore place owned by the same very good restaurateur. The restaurateur was Paul Murphy, who also owned another Tom favorite, Jacmel Inn. The restaurant for this piece is a quirky one, buried in downtown Mandeville called Nuvolari’s.
Paul was a skillful restaurateur with a knack for finding great chefs and loyal and competent managers..The manager at Nuvolari’s was there for decades until he retired, holding court each evening to a group of regulars at the bar, Baby Boomers who created a bar scene that always reminded me of Cheers.
A year or two back Paul sold all his holdings. Jacmel Inn went to his manager there, and the chef from Jacmel, Josh Garic, bought Nuvolari’s and became a chef/owner. Josh is a young guy with modern ideas of interpreting the classics. The change at Nuvolari’s was immediate.
In the Paul years, Nuvolari’s was a great Italian restaurant with a heavy pasta presence and roasted meat dishes, i.e., the blueprint for an upscale Italian dining experience. Each entree came with a small house salad, and the prices were great.
I knew things would be different the first visit we made after Josh took it over. The menu was smaller, with a lot of the dishes that were there before. But the night we went a special appetizer was stuffed dates. Stuffed dates??? How exotic! I had to get them.
They were terrific, stuffed with meat with a great sauce underneath. I don’t need to eat dates again because I am much more of a traditionalist, but I was glad to have tried them, and I felt safe in the exploration knowing Josh Garic had prepared the dish.
Paul Murphy was a gourmet, but a gourmet from the golden era of the late 1980s. Food today is a bit more adventuresome, and Josh Garic is exploring those avenues. They are also doing a Friday lunch, which is a very “in” thing to be doing now.
We went this week to have their “Steak Night” special. I knew it would be a superior version of this trendy phenomenon, but I was delighted to see they had Happy Hour starting at 4pm. We would do one and then the other.
Happy Hour rules annoy me because they seem silly, but mainly because I can’t move Tom around. I was happy to see a bartender understand our difficulties without any explanation from me. She seated us in an appropriate place for Tom, not subjugated to the house rules.
Happy Hours are not for us. They are for people who want to hang out and while away the afternoon with friends enjoying good deals on drinks. If all Happy Hour customers were like us the restaurant would go out of business.
For us, a Happy Hour is a chance to try a lot of menu items for the price of two. In the case of the Nuvolari’s Happy Hour, this opportunity was thrilling, not because there were so many things, but because they were $5 each and what seemed to be regular-sized portions. Best of all, everything was superb!
There is a medley of olives, citrus, and fennel as one of the Happy Hour choices, but they were out of that. We got an eggplant dish with shrimp in a sherry cream sauce, a giant meatball with Giardiniera vegetables (a great example of new twists on the classics), and a Beetroot salad with red and golden beets in a light vinaigrette with Buratta.
I got a generous pour of a Black Stallion red mainly to assuage my guilt. It was very nice.
When these came to the table I couldn’t believe how good they were. The eggplant was fried medallions about ⅓” in thickness, with a crispy coating. These were covered in a fantastic cream sauce that included a generous amount of large but not too-large shrimp. I wanted another one of these, but it would have been embarrassing because it was a large portion.
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The meatball was interesting. There are plenty of meatballs in this house, but this one must be made just for this purpose. It is enormous, and comes in a moat of luscious marinara, with Giardineira vegetables which I believe included some olives. These bits added crunch to this mouthful, which I found distracting. They did not seem to affect the flavor, so the crunch seemed unnecessary. I love Giardiniera vegetables, but I feel they are too often turning up now in places where they don't belong. I like them all by themselves. I never feel like they belong with meat, particularly beef. While this was distracting, I still liked this meatball very well, even though it was a little too firm for my taste.
While I never seek out beets, I do really like them. In a salad like the one served for this Happy Hour, I like them a lot. A few red beets about ½ inch thick were accompanied by smaller pieces of golden beets. Chunks of Buratta dotted this plate, and the entire thing was drizzled with a vinaigrette that included tiny bits of pistachio.
We were quite full after consuming these three large plates but we had come specifically for the steak night special. Since we were pretty full, as our friend the bartender had mentioned we’d be, we only ordered one steak special. Since dinner was on its way we got some of the delectable bread that is a trademark of Paul’s restaurants. (I’m happy Josh kept it.) This seeded Italian mini loaf comes to the table toasted just so, with butter that melts when it touches the warm bread. Exquisite!
It wasn’t long before the steak special arrived It was a 6 oz filet with mashed potatoes and green beans. The steak was crusty on the outside and seemed that it had been smoked first. There was a distinct smoked flavor, and it had an unappealing texture. It seemed tough to me, and I was surprised by that. This is a first-class restaurant using top-quality ingredients with a chef that knows what to do with them. What happened here? I ordered the steak medium and it was done like I asked, but it was tough. There was some Bleu Cheese butter on top, which was nice, and a few strands of fried potato hay, adding interest to the plating.
The mashed potatoes were creamy and smooth, appearing on the plate like they were scooped. A small serving of long buttery green beans finished out the plate. This was $39. Steak nights are a “thing” because they are a deal. But when a petite filet can be found for $38 the steak night looks like less of a deal.
I wouldn’t do this here again. I would, and will, return to Nuvolari’s for any number of other wonderful dishes I have already had, and still others I look forward to having in this quirky little Italian restaurant in downtown Mandeville.
