In a city rich in Italian cuisine, Parma Cucina stands out

In the greater San Diego area, you can visit three different Italian restaurants every week for a year without trying them all. More like five a week if you include the pizza counters. And that wouldn’t include all of the contemporary restaurants and steakhouses that offer pasta menus. That’s enough for you to wonder how we have time for Taco Tuesday.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for being late to the party when it comes to Parma Cucina Italiana. The charming little Hillcrest restaurant has been busy winning loyal customers for the better part of a decade, and I’m sure they’ve all been recommending it to friends since the start. Surely I would have figured it out sooner if I hadn’t been distracted by the annual onslaught of new Italian restaurants that seem to open every year.

As with so many other recent arrivals, Italians are behind the menu and atmosphere at Parma Cucina, setting a tone that is both friendly and authentic to northern Italy. I’m inclined to think that a lack of hype or pretension has something to do with the cheery and growing crowd that filled its dining room (and seating) on ​​a recent Saturday night. But, as usual, credit must be given to the stellar simplicity of the food.

We started with a salmon carpaccio starter which had so much fish for $17 I was worried it might derail our appetites. Instead, my wife and I both devoured our pasta starters and followed them with dessert: one of the most satisfying examples of tiramisu I’ve tried. Even the espresso shot that came with it was perfect.

Despite the kind of tried-and-tested simplicity we encountered – the menu highlights dishes such as lasagna ($24), scampi pesto with prawns ($23), and gnocchi with four-cheese sauce ($23) – my main course selection gave me a chance to try something for the first time. This would be the shape of stuffed pasta, fagottini, made to look like the kind of candy wrapper with a single twist at the top (commonly found with hard candy). Here, the homemade pasta is stuffed with a mixture of ricotta and truffles, topped with a truffle-enhanced cream sauce, as well as porcini mushrooms ($25). If you find a dish with a deeper umami profile, please let me know.

As a husband, I particularly enjoyed a dish that I did not try. My wife’s favorite Italian order is linguini seafood, that is, pasta with shellfish. I’ve spent a good part of a year taking her to Italian restaurants, looking for a good restaurant, but that’s mostly led to disappointment, especially since I get paid to recommend restaurants .

Finally, here’s Parma Cucina, with a regularly offered special, which lays prawns, mussels and clams with white wine and tomato sauce, on your choice of linguini or risotto. Not only is it one of the most visually stimulating dishes in the restaurant, but it earned me bonus points for booking a romantic evening.

That said, when I do it again, it will be Tuesday. This is due to an ongoing special that sets the price of a three-course meal for two at $56. Now that I finally know about the pleasant evening offered by Parma Cucina Italiana, perhaps I should leave Taco Tuesdays to the singles.