By Wendy Lemlin

For Chef Francesca Penoncelli, Ciccia Osteria is the manifestation of a long held dream.

 

Chef Francesca Penoncelli has cooked in high-end kitchens all over the world, from her native Italy to such far-off places as Paris, Seoul, Beirut and Dubai, before landing in the U.S. more than a dozen years ago. Never one to draw attention to herself, she’s mostly stayed in the background while her more outgoing husband, fellow chef, and business partner Mario Cassineri has represented the pair in the limelight (but always making sure to credit her contributions!). With the opening of Ciccia Osteria in the newly-hip neighborhood of Barrio Logan, Chef Francesca is fulfilling her dream of owning a “small, simple restaurant” with Mario, and putting the couple’s spin on time-honored family recipes with a touch of modern interpretation.

“When you travel a lot and work a lot, there comes a point when you want to settle down, and have something that makes you feel good,” Chef Francesca explains. “It’s not always about making money and focusing on the bottom line. It’s more about lasting satisfaction and being able to cook from the heart.”

Ciccia Osteria is a depature from the couple’s more recent projects. As corporate chefs for BiCE Ristorante, they opened the Milano-headquartered restaurant group’s locations in Dubai, Houston, Dallas, and, in 2009, San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, where they stayed until the restaurant closed in 2017. Francesca’s many talents extended to such responsibilities as creating the menus, crafting desserts, and curating the incredible cheese bar for which the Gaslamp Quarter location was famous, while Mario, as Executive Chef/partner, oversaw the business and promotional end of running the restaurant. “It got to the point at BiCE where we were doing everything for the business and promotion, but neither of us were getting to do much cooking, which I really missed and why I went to culinary school when I was young to become a chef,” Penoncelli notes. “Mario loves to have many irons in the fire, have multiple projects going at once, but I always knew that what I really wanted to do was a small, simple osteria or trattoria — in Italy these are usually family-run restaurants— with no other partners or corporate affiliation. And so, we took a gamble and opened Ciccia Osteria this past June.”

The goal at Ciccia Osteria was to provide a neighborhood eatery serving quality food at affordable prices—a goal which has been accomplished excellently. By locating in up-and-coming, increasingly hip Barrio Logan, where the pair worked to remodel a small house into a homey, comfortable dining space, they were able to avoid the “outrageous rents”, lack of parking, and mostly tourist clientele in such high traffic areas as The Gaslamp Quarter. By adapting the model of the osteria, where customers traditionally order at the counter and are served at the table, they were able to keep the staff small and the personnel costs low (along with rents, the largest expense for a restaurant). The result is a

menu where generously portioned appetizers are $10.50, meal-sized salads are $8, plentiful pasta dishes all cost $13, and meat or fish entrees run from $17-$26. (Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options are also readily available). Despite the extremely reasonable prices, the ingredients used to make the dishes are the same high quality as Chefs Francesca and Mario featured in their fine-dining kitchens. And, everything is freshly made. “Our kitchen is so small,” Penoncelli reveals, “that we don’t have any refrigerated storage! No walk-in cooler, no large refrigerator. Mario shops every day for the ingredients we will need that day and we make the pasta and focaccia fresh every morning.”

There are several items on the menu that you aren’t likely to see at any other Italian restaurant in town.

In the appetizer section, the Mushroom Flan, which isn’t really a flan but a rich and creamy savory concoction that defies labeling, features porcinini mushrooms imported from Italy and tangy crust of grated pecorino cheese. Combined with one of the salads, this could easily be a satisfying light meal.

For the Ubriaca, the gemelli pasta is cooked in red wine, infusing it with a beautiful rosy color and rich flavor that complements the sausage, ricotta and shallots.

Mario’s mother’s recipe is the inspiration for the Malfada Ragu dell’Aia, a farmhouse stew of rabbit, quail, chicken and duck. “After World War II,” Francesca explained, “meats like beef and lamb were very scarce and expensive, therefore the meat at family tables either came from barnyards or hunted wild. So, comfort food stews like this became very popular, and every region had its own interpretation.”

Both the Braised Beef Ravioli with mixed mushrooms and creamy marsala sauce and the wonderful stewed bell peppers side dish, Peperonata di Nonna Elvira, are from recipes by Francesca’s grandmother (Nonna Elvira).

The Corzetti Stampati are flat round pasta “coins”, that have been embossed with Ciccia Osteria’s logo and served in a light white wine sauce with clams, sundried tomato and fava beans. The stamps that create the embossing are traditionally handmade by Italian artisans, a craft Penoncelli says is dying out. “We were very fortunate to find someone to make a stamp with our logo. It is a very labor-intensive process to stamp and cut out the pasta rounds, but we thought it would be a unique dish to serve our guests. In Italy, the corzetti would often be stamped with the restaurant’s logo on one side and the seal of the city or region on the other. At weddings of prominent families, you might see the bride’s family crest on one side and the groom’s on the other.” The embossing serves more than a decorative purpose; the ridges that are created by the design help to hold the sauce to the otherwise flat, smooth pasta.

I have made numerous visits to Ciccia Osteria, ordering something different each time, and in all honesty, I can say that so far, everything I have tasted I would happily order again. Some of my favorites in addition to those mentioned above include:

Roasted Vegetable Salad Large enough to share or a full meal in itself, mixed greens enfold a variety of such roasted vegggies as butternut squash, celery root, eggplant, mushrooms, and whatever else is in season, along with 4 or 5 large plump tumeric roasted shrimp.

Mezzaluna Delicately flavored housemade pear ravioli with a gorgonzola and walnut sauce.

Truffle Mushroom A steal at only $5, this umami-rich side of assorted wild mushrooms is made earthy and wonderfully redolent with truffles and garlic. Both this dish and the Peperonata are divine when accompanied by the freshly baked foccacia and a glass of one of the carefully curated Italian wines.

View the full menu here.

One last tip—ALWAYS save room for dessert! Made in-house, each and every one of the daily offerings, including any of gluten-free options, is totally worth the calorie splurge.

Ciccia Osteria is currently open nightly except Tuesday & Wednesday 4:30-9:30 pm and for brunch on Saturday & Sunday from noon to 2:30 pm.

2233 Logan Ave., San Diego, 92113 (619) 674-4069