Nodo is what happened when the Junction got its mojo on. The buzz in this place is so loud (both metaphorically and actually) that good luck getting a table (no reservations, of course), and once you do, be prepared to shout.
The food is Italian comfort food. It will not go up in lights on anybody’s marquee, but there is a level of competence and integrity that brings a smile. I like the texture of the grilled octopus (neither tough nor mushy) although it could use some more char from the grill. It comes with nicely grilled zucchini, potatoes that say roasted but taste deep fried and good EVOO. Same level of (moderate) enthusiasm for the minestra di verdure, a light minestrone, tomato based broth with fresh veg and good flavour.
They’re clearly a pizza ’n’ pasta joint, so la macelleria pizza (various meats) seems appropriate. It’s got ricotta salata, pancetta, hot sopressata and pork sausage on a light smear of tomato sauce. I would have preferred more blistering on the crust, but the various meats are loaded with savour. And salt. It is not the pizza that has my heart pounding at Nodo. They do gnocchi two ways. Old school is with wild boar ragu (to my mind, just another meat sauce), truffle oil and parmigiano reggiano. New school is garlic cream with truffle, corn and wild mushroom. If they were smarter, the $19 gnocchi price would buy a plate with half of each.
Because which would you choose?
If you’re going to eat gnocchi, it might as well have some heavy cream. Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, I say, at these moments of great decision. Nodo’s new school gnocchi are about as erotic as little pasta pillows get, lightly browned, their sauce redolent of truffle and wild mushroom. This is a plate-licker.
As are the cannoli. Since L’Unità’s cannoli went hard, I, the Diogenes of dessert, have been searching the city for an honest cannoli (defined as crisp, tender and freshly stuffed so as to not be soggy). And here it is! The Nodo cannoli pass all three tests; what’s more, their filling is creamed ricotta, unsullied by the weirdness of candied fruit. Apparently chef Roberto Marotta learned the recipe from his Sicilian grandmother.
When a new resto gets so popular so fast, we have to ask if it’s about more than the food. The room is lovely — long but not too narrow, with high ceilings and miscellaneous weathered Italianate objects. But that hardly explains all the buzz.
Nodo’s meteoric rise puts me in mind of an old New Yorker cartoon, wherein a Yuppie couple (remember them?) are out for dinner, and the husband says to the waiter: “We want to eat something nobody’s heard of.” It’s the “new is cool’ phenomenon. The Junction is new — or at least newly chic. Italian comfort food is having a renaissance so it’s, for now, new. Again. Diners are flocking not because Nodo is so great but because it makes them feel like explorers. And cool.
Nodo, 2885 Dundas St. W., 416-901-1559, nodo@nodorestaurant.ca
$70 Dinner for two