Tacoma’s Crudo & Cotto is as Italian as it gets, with nary a meatball in sight

An online search with the words “carpaccio di pesce spada” returns Italian results. Graciously, the menu in your hands describes the contents in English: house-smoked swordfish, thinly sliced, presented on a bed of bitter arugula dressed lightly in garlic oil with olives and sweet potato chips.

Here you might be tempted to inquire further with the tactful server — a worthy pursuit, where you will learn the ingredient list includes the juice of blood oranges, the bite of green peppercorns and ginger root — but trusting that Giampaolo Falchetti has your best taste buds in mind wouldn’t be a mistake.

It’s a simple plate, one easy to overlook on a crowded menu. But at this Italian restaurant, if we must call it that, the number of choices is purposely limited, and they very purposely exclude spaghetti and meatballs.

Located inside an old, muted yellow Craftsman house in Tacoma’s Proctor District, the 16-month-old Crudo & Cotto is an evolving love letter to the chef’s native Umbria, a landlocked region of central Italy where most of his family still lives. Rather than promote the romantic vision of a nonna’s recipe, he considers how Italian chefs are experimenting at this moment in time, which has translated to an affection for Japanese ingredients, for instance, or Scandinavian techniques.

“We didn’t put Italiano in the name for a couple of reasons,” explained Falchetti, who with his wife Kathryn Philbrook also owns Basilico Ristorante Italiano in Olympia. “We experience a lot of Italian, even sometimes too much. Personally I wanted something that was a little more playful.”

That sentiment begins upon arrival, as the host greets you downstairs and gestures up a staircase. Though from the bottom you cannot see the dining room, you can hear the gentle set of a plate on a tablecloth, the whooshing pop of a wine cork. Perhaps you opt for the deck, where dinner feels as intimate as your best friend’s house — only here the wine room holds bottles from lesser-seen regions such as Sardinia and Taurasi.

“When we found the place that was this old house,” said Falchetti, “the place chose us — we didn’t choose the place.”

The kitchen is a quarter of the size of Basilico, and in a sense, the “raw and cooked” concept created itself.

The crudo bar, akin to a sushi bar at a Japanese restaurant, serves as both an attraction and “an extension of the kitchen.” In addition to the swordfish, past menus have featured gravlax and nova lox, the latter cured and cold-smoked, as well as carpaccio cipriani (beef tenderloin). Currently beef tartare — finely chopped with rosemary, almonds, capers, paprika and a salt-cured quail egg yolk — stars next to Poké all’Italiana, king salmon cubed and brined with ponzu, tamari and balsamic vinegar.

Falchetti admits that “it’s not really poke,” but familiarizing a dish with a name or an ingredient eases otherwise trepidatious guests.

“We gave ourselves the liberty to maybe sometimes mingle things like balsamic and soy sauce,” said the chef. “Then you have this new perspective of Italian ingredients with something from abroad. It’s not that I see what is around and try to do Northwest interpretations, but I see also now what’s happening in Italy.”

From the hot kitchen, seafood plays another prominent role. Last summer, the menu featured fettucine di salmone with squash and zucchini, fritto misto with mollusks and crustaceans, and zuppa del Nord-Ovest, a shallow bowl of Dungeness crab and clams in a terribly comforting tomato fish broth that should be sipped until that swipe of last crostini.

That and the the quaglie in al forno assured me return visits would be necessary. Two quails, their skinny legs pointing your fork toward the body, wrapped in pancetta (house-smoked) hid the fragrance of rosemary, garlic and duck fat.

The game bird is “very classical Italian,” said Falchetti. The late-winter and early-spring menu has showcased duck legs, and he hopes to secure rabbit and later his favorite partridge and pheasant.

Homemade pastas typically include a seasonal ravioli with rotating options such as chitarrine (square spaghetti) and cavatelli. Again, no meatballs, but sundried tomato and pesto, seasonal vegetables and crustaceans.

At the hour-long happy hour, snag a dozen oysters for $24, along with an $8 order of calamari (and sometimes fish and chips), fried in an airy rice-flour batter only available during this time, and a house bottle of red or white wine at half-price. The full list splits almost evenly between Italian selections and Washington/Oregon. Leave time, and room, for a grappa or digestivo recommendation from the well-trained staff to pair with berry-topped panna cotta.

CRUDO & COTTO

▪ 2717 N. Proctor St., Tacoma, 253-292-1120, crudoandcotto.com

▪ Tuesday-Saturday 4:30-9 p.m., happy hour 4:30-5:30 p.m.; reservations recommended

▪ Crudo, $10-$23/market price; Cotto, $18-$39/mp; wines $8-$12/glass, most bottles $40-$70; digestivi $7-$14

This story was originally published April 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.