Long before I ever set foot inside Spartaco's tiny Italian trattoria in South Tampa, I heard from friends that when the owner's mother is here on one of her extended visits from Italy, she helps make special pasta dishes by hand. Once at the restaurant, I noticed how warmly every customer was welcomed and the simple kindness of the waiters, who joked with the kids and politely went the extra mile to make diners feel comfortable.
The restaurant has been open only a couple of years, but its namesake and owner, Spartaco Giolito, who hails originally from the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, near Rimini, has already made a place for himself among savvy diners. Even on weeknights, there's usually a crowd waiting outside along the balcony for tables. The menu features dishes from his homeland -- family recipes, tried and true over the years, a cherished part of Giolito's Italian heritage.
Spartaco has been working in restaurants since he was 15. He graduated from hotel management school in Italy and came to work in the U.S. for his cousin, then-owner of another well-regarded Italian restaurant in Tampa called Donatello. He worked there five years, transferred to an Atlanta restaurant for almost five years and then landed nearby at the Caffe Paradiso for almost three years, before opening his own place.
The restaurant has only 13 tables, carefully set in less space than what might accommodate a doublewide trailer. When you sit down, you feel like family.
It reminded me of the friendly neighborhood restaurants I visited in Italy, tiny and unassuming and jolly with the laughter of the owner, his friends and his relatives. Everybody talking at once, casual, leisurely joy expressed through food.
Hanging on the wall are simple, black-and-white pictures of Gabicce Monte, Italy, where Spartaco's brother and sister-in-law operate a restaurant. The peach-color walls, hand-painted water bottles and candles give Spartaco's a festive feel that attracts a pleasant, diverse crowd: families with kids, grandparents with grandkids, older couples, younger couples, and sisters dining out together.
The restaurant has a respectable wine list of 45 selections, the majority Italian, with some Californian, French and Chilean brands. Most are available by the bottle, and only a few can be ordered by the glass. The restaurant should offer a few more wines by the glass for light drinkers.
Because the menu is written in Italian, the waiter takes time to translate, helping you choose something you'll really enjoy. Both times I dined there, the wine appeared almost instantly, followed by a free appetizer, like a cold, sliced yellow tomato sprinkled with fresh crabmeat and mozzarella.
Still, try one of the appetizers listed on the menu as well because they're among the Spartaco's highlights. My favorite was vitello tonnato ($7.50), which in Giolito's native province is considered a summer dish. Made from veal roasted with herbs and sliced paper-thin, it is served with a pool of cold mayonnaise heavy with tuna and strewn with little buttons of capers.
"In Italy, people eat it at the beach," explained Spartaco. "They take a big bowl of salad, the tonnato with prosciutto and melon, and eat lightly outdoors. Then, they eat a big meal at night."
We also enjoyed the fresh salads with varied greens and simple vinaigrette dressings. The insalatina tricolore ($7) featured Belgian endive, radicchio, arugula and a simple oil and vinegar dressing topped with Asiago cheese.
The soup was one of the few disappointments. I tried two of the three on the menu, pasta e fagioli ($5.50), a famous white bean soup, and minestrone e granchio, ($5.50), vegetable soup with crabmeat. Both suffered from weak and watery broth, a fatal error no matter how beautiful its accompanying bounty of vegetables, beans or pasta.
Between courses, we noshed on a lovely white bread and pondered our next sally. Each night, the kitchen creates special dishes that are not on the menu, which the waiter describes. But with the wine and the various other distractions, we kept forgetting what the specials were.
Halfway through, we needed another reminder; the waiter laughed and repeated the specials.
Each day, the chef prepares a different type of risotto. One night when I was there, the classic Italian dish was made with shrimp and portobello mushrooms ($16.50). Its use of arborio rice and a delicate, labor-intensive cooking method is supposed to produce a creamy result, but with the individual grains still separate and firm. Spartaco's version wasn't exactly creamy, but the grains remained firm, flavorful and hearty, and the chef was generous with the shrimp and mushrooms, so it still was respectable.
Another night, I ordered sacchettini ai sei formaggi ($15.50), pasta pockets stuffed with six kinds of cheese and topped with a lusty red sauce. It was pretty spectacular. The pasta was so smooth and hot and so full of cheese it spurted when I bit into it.
By the time we got to the entrees, we had been yammering away and eating for an hour and a half. We had lost track of time. We were still pondering the menu, though we finally opted for the Italian classic called osso bucco, veal shank cooked to a tender perfection and topped with a sprightly, tomato-y sauce. It was tender to a fault, fell apart under the fork, and was gone in minutes (a half-order costs $11.95).
My entree, costolette di agnello scottadito ($19.50), turned out to be lamb chops pounded thin, plied with garlic and rosemary and then grilled and served atop a demi-glace brown sauce. I didn't care much for it because I had ordered it medium-rare and it was cooked to well done.
Better was dentice all' arancia ($18.50), boneless snapper filet lounging in a sunnily piquant puddle of sauce made from white wine and orange juice. Cooked perfectly with a simple but delectable sauce, it certainly got my attention. Yum!
Closing time had come and gone, and we were the last diners left in the darkened restaurant. I'm sure the waiters hoped we might skip dessert, but one of us is a former French pastry chef and the other an inveterate dessert lover, so we hurriedly ordered the classic French pastry, profiteroles ($5.50).
We couldn't find the pastry at first, but eventually it surfaced at the bottom of the dish, overlain with a deep brown chocolate mousse, its satiny richness so full-bodied that it left a glow, like the spell of a great kiss.
We left on a buzzing high note, stuffed with pasta, happy with wine, winsome flavors still fresh in our mouths and minds, vowing a return visit.
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