Mucca Osteria was a great discovery for us spoiled former New Yorkers accustomed to fantastic Italian restaurants of all kinds. Mucca Osteria belongs to a category where tradition and old recipes are fused with modern cuisine – our favorite type.
We love Italian staples like pizza and pasta, yet, when we go out to eat, we want to taste something that will wow our taste buds. And there must be a good and, moreover, exciting wine list. Mucca Osteria delivers on both ends.
Mucca Osteria Story
As its name suggests, Mucca Osteria is “a transplant,” like many people in Portland. And it’s kind of is.
The story of Mucca Osteria started 6,000 miles away. Simone Savaiano, a Rome native who left behind two restaurants in Italy, moved to the United States in the early 2000s, where he married Los Angeles native Kathy Chaya. At first, he settled down working at Santa Monica’s Via Veneto restaurant for about five years.
But in 2009, Savaiano and Chaya hit the road, first traveling to Asia, then returning for a road trip along the West Coast, and eventually reaching Portland. It was love at first sight, and they decided to move here.
Shortly after moving to Portland, Saviano called Pietro Biondi, his former colleague from Via Veneto, to help him start the new restaurant.
Before we talk about the food, let’s talk about the name.
While Saviano’s Osteria (tavern in Italian) is named after Mucca (Cow), it’s more than just meat. Almost everything is made from scratch, including pasta and bread, using his own starter that he makes by fermenting the raisins. The small menu is composed of authentic Italian food from all over Italy with a modern twist.
Interestingly, both Saviano and Pietro are certified sommeliers, which makes Mucca Osteria even more fun for us.
Mucca Osteria Tasting Menu
We had two options: a six-course tasting menu or a la carte. We decided to go with the chef’s menu. We opted out of pairing it with wine for each course, but we were picking over our shoulder at the neighboring table that went with a recommended wine.
We started with cold corn soup with shiso peppers and pancetta flakes. The soup had a complex smoky, and lemony profile. Still, one of us felt that it was a bit too corny. No pun intended.
The exceptional Salmon Tartar that followed was complemented by the tomato-based sauce and sourdough crostini.
In the third course, grilled scallops were accompanied by parmesan cheese paste, blood orange sauce, and onion relish on top of the scallops. We played with our food a bit by slicing the scallop and combining it with sauce, paste, and relish in different proportions. Depending on personal sensitivities and tastes, some may find that onion relish can sometimes overtake delicate scallop flavor if used too much.
House-made Gemelli pasta with boar ragu was fantastic and perfectly balanced. Surprisingly, we felt it didn’t need any wine to go along with it because it was so full of flavors.
The Pork with Fig Sauce was our main course – another very successful dish. The menu recommends Sicilian red – Perricone. We decided to go along with it and found it was a less-than-ideal choice.
While some find Perricone to be somewhat similar in profile to Barbera from Piedmonte. The difference, however, is that Perricone is a tannic wine.
Why didn’t it go along with the dish? It’s all in the sauce, which is sensibly sweet and works well with pork. On the other hand, sweetness elevated tannin in Perricone to the next level, and the wine felt even a bit bitter.
Considering the sweet profile of this dish, we believe Amarone or its little brother Valpolicella Ripasso, Primitivo (Zinfandel), or Susumaniello, a little-known red-wine grape from Puglia, southern Italy, would’ve worked better.
Our epicurean adventure finished on the sweet note of chocolate dessert, and we think the wines we recommended for the main course would’ve been perfect with this too.
Wine List
The wine list is so vital that we would change our plans if we didn’t like the wines. In the case of Mucca Osteria, it was as attractive as the restaurant’s concept. And we found a real treasure on the wine list.
We started with Jose Michel et Fils Brut Tradition because we thought bubbles would work best with the first two or three courses.
Pick the next wine was a real challenge because we liked many from the list. Besides some classics and must-haves of the excellent wine list, there were rare and, for some people, obscure wines.
After much deliberation, we decided to go with an “obscure” white – 2018 Friulano Amphora. On the surface, Friulano is not that rare and is considered one of the noble Italian varietals.
We were intrigued by what impact amphora had on this wine and decided to check it out. The wine paired well with most of our courses thanks to its almost “orange wine” character and substantial body.
If we were to pick one word to describe it, it would be orange. The dried orange, dusty road, church candle, hazelnut, and dried flower aromas were followed by the palate with great structure, zesty acidity accentuated by, yes, dried orange slices, dried apricot, orange liqueur, and mountain honey.
The acidity and citrus in the wine supported the first few courses and balanced the richness of boar ragu and pork chop. We loved the wine so much that we purposely left a couple of glasses in the bottle to give it another go the next day.
After Dinner Thoughts
Since we moved to Portland from NYC, we struggled to find an Italian restaurant that could stand up to our epicurean experiences in New York.
Our search is hardly over. Still, now we know where to go if we’re in the mood for modern Italian cuisine and rare Italian wines to accompany our meal.
Keep following us or subscribe with your email to be the first to know when we publish a new professional, non-sponsored restaurant, winery, wine review, and everything that touches your discerning taste buds.
