Chris Hynes
Polpo con potate, or octopus salad, is intriguing, studded with luscious potatoes and lightly charred octopus.
Bar Corallini looks the part. It’s easy to feel you’ve suddenly jetted to Italy and are lazing at a chic bar on the Gulf of Naples, sipping a Venetian spritz and picking at a fresh octopus salad, catered to by staff in black-and-white striped shirts that recall the uniforms of the gondoliers.
The old Schenk-Huegel building, with entrances on both Atwood Avenue and Winnebago Street, has been renovated in a way that perks up the space — it’s no longer the dark patisserie of the previous tenant, Chocolaterian. White walls, exposed brick, light wood — there’s a tremendous sense of joie de vivre.
The Atwood side holds the bar and a modest amount of seating; the Winnebago side is open to the kitchen, and is a somewhat quieter room for dining. Everyone is friendly; service is prompt, even hovering; and it feels good to be having a good time in a beautiful space. But with many of the dishes, there is something just a little bit off.
At first, Bar Corallini’s arctic char — a nice piece of fish grilled with a satisfying crisp to its skin — was appealing. But it was oversalted. And it was plated with oily, ho-hum roasted vegetables and an unnecessary yogurt sauce. I remembered the seared salmon and braised French lentils I had a month earlier at Sardine: it was I-want-this-never-to-end delicious. At $25, Sardine’s dish is comparable in size, better prepared, and a dollar less expensive.
Chris Hynes
Arctic char
There are plenty of pizzas coming out of Bar Corallini’s wood-burning oven. The crust stands up to other Neapolitans in town, with good, bready flavor. The menu lacks a simple margherita, always a good test for a pizza oven. The closest is the tomato and burrata — a topping combo that doesn’t quite work. This burrata is too mild and melty to survive on pizza, and the cherry tomatoes and arugula don’t have much flavor either, leaving a sweet balsamic drizzle to dominate the pie. The pepperoni and pickled pepper pizza was the most successful of the pies I tried — delicious. But it’s described as having tomato sauce (I couldn’t find any). It probably doesn’t need it; jalapenos coupled with spicy pepperoni make this kind of a heat bomb. A novel touch is a welcome drizzle of honey, but it’s hard to discern. The sausage and rapini pie was good enough, but the somewhat bitter rapini didn’t truly complement the sausage and was undercooked.
Missteps are small, but they accumulate. The eggplant fritters have a wonderfully crisp exterior, but the interior is a bready mush. The accompanying tomato sauce is restrained — too acidic to be bland, but seemingly unspiced and without the savor of a good, simple, fresh tomato simmer.
Another appetizer, the polpo con patate, or octopus salad, was intriguing, with luscious cubes of crispy potatoes joining tender morsels of ever so slightly charred octopus in a warm salad. But the rest consists of too much celery, odd bits of orange and grapefruit, and bright green olives. Salt comes from the olives and plump, briny capers. The dish seems to cry out for a good squeeze of lemon to pull everything together. Still, it’s not far off.
The insalata di cavolo, a chopped kale salad, tastes delicious. It’s a very fine chop, enlivened with microscopic but crispy breadcrumbs and equally fine bits of Pecorino Romano cheese, unified by an understated lemon vinaigrette. It’s a big portion, and it should be split, or even divided among three or four as a side, because the main problem is its uniformity – every bite of it is exactly like every other bite. You get tired of eating it. The menu features several large salads; it could use a true side salad.
Pasta is cooked nicely al dente, and both the linguini with clams and the rigatoni were good, if a bit oily. Red pepper flakes overpowered the sweet clams in the linguini, though. On the other hand, the tart, tangy, creamy Genovese sauce on the rigatoni is too good to pass up and almost too rich for one person to take at one sitting. This is beef tenderloin stewed almost to disintegration in an onion sauce made even more intense by additions of meat juice and wine. Score.
There are eight pasta dishes altogether; gluten-free pasta is available and several have vegan preparations on request.
I wish I could end on a high note. But my pretty cannoli, filled with a very fresh and lemony ricotta filling and studded with pistachios, was marred by the shell, which lacked the crunch of a really good cannoli.
Bar Corallini is obviously filling a void in this neighborhood and it’s a fun place to be. But at this point there is somewhat more style than substance. It shouldn’t take much to right the balance.
Bar Corallini
2004 Atwood Ave; 608-709-1316; Barcorallini.com
4 pm-10 pm Tues.-Thurs., 4 pm-midnight Fri., 11 am-midnight Sat., 11 am-9 pm Sun.
$6-$26; Winnebago Street entrance is accessible.
