My list of go-to Italian places in ATL is very short, even though I love the genre. It’s comfort food, and I love the stark contrast of simple ingredients prepared with an intense attention to detail that is presented in a quality Italian meal. Lately I’ve been finding this at La Pietra Cucina, where a simple fresh made tagliatelle with mushrooms in butter sauce sounds so uncomplicated, but is so memorable.
I like Sotto Sotto, especially for their risottos, but I haven’t been there in years. It’s just one of those restaurants that isn’t very close to my home, so I often forget about it when tossing around dining ideas. La Tavola, a Fifth Group restaurant, is another worthy Italian destination of which I’m guilty of doing the same thing. I’ve only been there two or three times over the past five years, but I have always had good experiences, at what I think are fair prices.
For an even better deal than usual, La Tavola has a Monday evening special called “Molto Monday’s”, where you are able to choose from five pasta dishes and pay only $10 for them. Based on the regular pasta dish prices, it appears to be a savings of $4-$6 per entree.
Of course, the bill goes up if you add appetizers, but I can’t resist simple classics like a well made Caesar salad. I also ordered the burrata with tomato conserva pictured above. The burrata doesn’t stack up to what the can get you, but the crostini and tomato were the perfect accompaniment and I did enjoy this.
I’ve been craving carbonara frequently lately, so that’s what I ordered off the $10 pasta menu. It was a huge pile of pasta, served very hot with lots of cheese, pepper, guincale, and of course, the raw egg. My waitress tried to judge my reaction when the dish arrived and sheepishly asked, “you know you mix in the egg, right”? She wasn’t being condescending, I just think she was unsure why I was just looking at it (I was waiting for her to leave so I could be a huge dork and take a picture) and she wanted to help out. It was a funny moment.
Katie got a rigatoni dish, served with mozzarella and spinach. It was somewhat of a play on the classic orecchiette with broccoli rabe. That’s something the menu at La Tavola tends to do – the dishes have regional/classic roots, but they allow the menu to change constantly and they tweak things a bit, resulting in something new and enticing.
We had a great time, I didn’t spend too much, and I was waddling out of there after almost eating the entire plate of pasta. La Tavola definitely needs to be more of a part of my regular rotation.
A Recent Visit to La Tavola by RowdyFood
