La Casita Bistrot

What comes to the table at La Casita Bistrot

The menu is kept short and is carried in four languages. The starters alone show where the house stands: an allioli of tomato and basil with rosemary focaccia and olives, house-made croquettes, a tartare of pink tomato and beetroot with toasted almonds and avocado, goat cheese in filo pastry with chutney, an octopus carpaccio on potato cream with balsamic caviar, a beef tartare with crisp bread.

The first courses are where the Italian hand becomes clear. Cannelloni of confit duck with demi-glace and shimeji mushrooms. Black tagliolino with a ragù of prawns and bisque. Home-made truffle tagliatelle with beef tenderloin, leek and truffle cream, with a shaving of truffle if you want it. A risotto with green asparagus, mushrooms and crisp parmesan. Gnocchetti alla parmigiana with scamorza, aubergine and tomato sauce.

From the sea come a tuna tagliata in an almond crust with a vegetable wok, baked cod with cauliflower cream, roasted peppers and black garlic, and monkfish wrapped in speck on Venere rice with a prawn and saffron sauce. From the land, three tenderloins — Irish beef, Spanish veal, and lamb with truffled potato cream — plus secreto of Iberian pork with an egg yolk emulsion and sweet potato tataki. To finish, a pineapple carpaccio with lime and mint ice cream, the house parfait, and a dark chocolate coulant with pistachio cream.

Pasta, made by hand every day

The point where the house commits itself is the pasta. Tagliatelle, tortelloni and gnocchetti are made by hand in its own kitchen every day, and the house describes this not as a slogan but as a way of working: it is about the resting times, the inherited techniques and the quality of every single ingredient. The produce for it is gathered seasonally at the local market — which is why the menu shifts with the market and the season.

You can read that off the card itself. Hardly a dish carries more than three components in its subtitle; what reaches the plate is placed, not piled.

Vegetarian cooking is no footnote here. A veggie section of its own lists roasted cauliflower with red bean hummus and kimchi, alongside the tomato and beetroot tartare. For children there is a short selection of its own with mezze penne, gnocchetti with butter and parmesan, and a chicken escalope.

Garden, wines and booking

Behind the dining room lies a private garden overgrown with bougainvillea. The house describes it as intimate and elegant, and asks explicitly that you book ahead — at this size that is not a formality.

The wine list takes an unusual route. Instead of a broad selection it carries a run of Italian wines put together exclusively for the house from a single cellar in Verona: Amarone della Valpolicella and Ripasso della Valpolicella Superiore from Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara, alongside a Rosso del Veronese, a white of Sauvignon and Garganega, a Pinot Grigio delle Venezie and a Bardolino Chiaretto from Lake Garda. Among the spirits the house stays in the Veneto, with grappa from Poli and Nardini.

How it sees itself, La Casita Bistrot writes in a single line on its own site: this is not a restaurant but simply family — whoever walks in is not a customer but a guest in the house. You do not have to take such lines at face value to see what they are aiming at.