Skip to content

Breaking News

Author
PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

A hot new restaurant called Burrata Italian Kitchen & Pizzeria opened on the eastern slope of Branford Hill just about a year ago. Well, kind of new. The sight of an SBC burger on the menu triggered the realization that the restaurant, though renamed, remodeled and recalibrated, must still be owned by the SBC folks.

I didn’t take that as any kind of bad news. With the brewing equipment removed, the space works better, with a big square bar with a brick base and wood top in the lounge and cushioned wood booths with high backs in the dining room. And I have always enjoyed the SBC restaurants, of which two remain (Southport and Milford), ever since reviewing the Southport original in the 1990s. I like the cooking of Dave Rutigliano, who with Bill and Mark daSilva, co-owns Burrata. Lately, the experienced trio seems to be embracing more modern concepts, including Local Kitchen & Bars in Fairfield and South Norwalk, Sitting Ducks in Trumbull and Stratford, and, of course, Burrata.

For drinks, Burrata offers a selection of cocktails ($9), sangrias ($8), wines ($6-$10, $20-$80) and craft beers in bottles ($5-$7), cans ($5-$6) and bombers ($8-$9). But they have embraced the modern, with tap lines for both wine and craft beer, one reserved for SBC, usually its popular Southport Hydroponic White. Our Dead Bolt Red Blend ($7) hit the spot, but wouldn’t win any prizes for subtlety.

Often the bread offered by a restaurant communicates a great deal about what it thinks of its customers. Burrata serves first-rate brick-oven Italian bread with a ramekin of whipped butter and a great assortment of marinated olives.

It’s a fun menu, albeit a bit all over the map, kind of Italian crossed with gastropub. Sections include starters, fresh-cut salads, all-natural burgers, pastas, Italian kitchen classics, brick oven and specialty pizzas and even old-school grinders. From the starters, we can vouch for the skillet meatballs ($7.99) served in a hot-hot-hot little iron skillet in a pool of pomodoro with a dollop of ricotta and a crostino, and were sorely tempted by the eggplant fries ($8.99 and $11.99).

Most dinners come with a choice of soup or salad. We enjoy both a fresh-tasting tomato bisque (normally $5.49), although it could have been served hotter, and a refreshing house salad (normally $5.99) with which we elected a blue cheese balsamic dressing.

Pizza? Despite being a bit pale for New Haven County tastes, we greatly enjoyed our thin-crusted clam pizza ($16) with mozzarella, chopped clam, bacon, garlic, basil, EVOO and Romano cheese. Pasta? Our broken burrata ($13.99) features a mountain of nicely al dente linguine in pomodoro sauce with olive oil and basil shreds, a broken-in-half bladder of burrata spilling down the two sides like an oversized egg.

Italian kitchen classic? Served in a tomato sauce with sweet peppers and onion and resting on a pile of mashed potatoes, our thick, double-cut, garlic-rubbed Tuscan pork loin chop ($18) comes nicely medium, as requested, and sporting a tasty crust.

After so much excess, we don’t have much room left for dessert, despite a tempting assortment. So instead we share a classic, hand-dipped, black-and-white milkshake ($6). Noting that all of the owners’ other restaurant concepts are in pairs now, I wonder if some other town will get lucky one of these days.

Burrata Italian Kitchen & Pizzeria, 850 W. Main St., Branford, is open Monday and Wednesday 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.; Tuesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m.; and Sunday 11:30 a.m. to midnight. 203-481-2739; burratakitchen.com.