Sardinian food, and I don't mean plates of sardines

One of the joys of living in San Francisco (or any large city) is that there's always a new restaurant to try (though it's also a little depressing to see how often restaurants close down...). Last night's adventure was the first time I've been to a "Sardinian" restaurant: our neighborhood's own La Ciccia.

La Ciccia's menu (small but very enticing) features a lot of seafood (which I guess you'd expect from an island), and pizza. Normally I would have immediately gone for the pizza, but the special sounded too good: they were featuring porcini mushrooms in several dishes, and for an entre they were offering a fresh-spaghetti dish with porcini mushrooms cooked in some light oils and spices (I don't remember the details, I just remember saffron and lemon being in there...). I don't get to eat fresh pasta that often, it's quite different from the normal store bought pasta, and I think the texture is a lot more pleasing.

For an appetizer, I went with the Casisceddu cun Pibaroni e Croccoriga (Mozzarella with Roasted Peppers and Zucchini). The roasted peppers were great - placing them in the same bite as the mozzarella created a good mixture of tastes.

My wife went the seafood route with the Inzalaredda de Mari cun Patata a Buddiu (Seafood salad with boiled Potatoes) - which had fresh calamari and squid. And for an entre had another special, which was the prawns.

For dessert, we both went off menu again towards the specials - one was a blood orange sorbet, the other was a chocolate dessert (some sort of tart) with an espresso-based topping. The cholate dish was great. Side story: the person from the kitchen who delivered the desserts started putting the chocolate down in front of my wife, but when I corrected her, she said "ah, usually it's the woman who orders chocolate!".

In general, everything on the menu seemed very simple and pure. There were only a few ingredients in each dish, and everything was presented in a very natural way. I have no idea if this is typical of Sardinian food or if this was just a Noe Valley restaurant trying to be hip. Regardless, it was a good dining experience.

One of the reasons we were excited to go to La Ciccia was because we had read about the owner's passion for wine. Unfortunately, they had discountinued their wine flights, so we weren't able to sample as much as we would have liked. Although I'm finally starting to understand California wines, when it comes to identifying Italian (or Sardinian) wines, I know next to nothing. Our waitress kindly helped us pick out a few glasses. I ended up with a glass of Carignano del Sulcis "Grotta Rossa" Cantina Santadi 2003 and a glass of Monica di Sardegna "Perdera" Argiolas 2003. I actually felt they tasted extremely similar (not a bad thing, but was surprised a bit). I'm no wine connoisseur, but the wines definitely tasted different from the California wines I'm used to drinking, which was a nice change for me.

Enjoying food and wine is still a relatively new experience for me, so I'm just learning how to talk about the experience of eating. Bear with me for awhile as I search for the right voice to use when describing a dining outing...