Graze through the exciting new menu at Il Gatto and you might be tempted to shout, "Tim McKee is in the house."
After 25 years of hard use, the former Figlio went through a top-to-bottom transformation last year, but the food side of the remake fell a little flat.
Enter Mr. McKee. Hot off his successful 2009 redo of the Guthrie Theater's Cue into Sea Change, McKee -- who, in a bit of culinary irony, got his start working the line at Figlio in the early 1990s -- was recruited by Il Gatto's ownership, Parasole Restaurant Holdings, to refocus but not wholly reinvent their Italian-minded Calhoun Square flagship.
Done. With an assist by longtime colleague Jim Christiansen, who oversees the kitchen on a day-to-day basis, McKee's inventive, medium-priced Il Gatto menu now more than matches the room's easygoing setting. The food is far more rustic than the fancy turns diners have come to expect from McKee's work at La Belle Vie, but it has an intrinsic appeal.
Starting with a profoundly delicious cured swordfish, a hyper-idealized version of canned tuna that's served with a colorful array of heirloom tomatoes -- and flirtatious pops of sweet basil -- that manage to capture some of their faraway peak-season flavor; where does Christiansen find them?
A grilled bread salad is also blessed with more of those mystery tomatoes and spicy greens tossed in a restrained mix of olive oil and salt. The grilled octopus is similarly dreamy, a snaky tentacle that's charred on the outside, seductively tender and irresistible inside. A roasted beet salad -- dancing with pepper, crunchy toasted hazelnuts and ultra-creamy burrata -- made me appreciate this well-worn genre all over again.
Request a booth near the kitchen and observe pizza-making staffers going through their paces, artfully tossing dough and then coaxing thin, semi-crisp, beautifully golden, prudently topped crusts out of the blazing wood-burning oven. Or take a seat in the lively bar and dive into one of the off-the-beaten-path pastas, sold in small and large portions. Most are welcome exercises in restraint (a decidedly anti-Parasole impulse), whether it's a robust lamb ragu spooned over thin, mint-tinted ribbons, or a steaming bowl of randomly cut, cornmeal-fortified sheets, blanketed with porcinis and forkfuls of wood-smoked chicken.
McKee and Christiansen turn seemingly minor touches into major impressions. One example: The kitchen's wood-burning oven forges fragile bread balloons, which are draped with parchment-thin prosciutto slices and roasted pears; the results are showy, surprising and tasty. Even the side dishes are don't-miss wonders, especially the bright blend of crunchy, citrus-kissed radishes.
