Review: Ca’Bianca

Ca'Bianca's Cannelloni di Pollo. (Crista Jeremiason/PD)

For most of its history since ancient times, Italy was a collection of chauvinistic city states, each with its own dialect of the Italian language, its local loyalties and its local culinary traditions. Then, in the 19th Century, Giuseppe Garibaldi and others led the Resurgence that resulted in the unification of these states into the country we know as Italy today.

Thankfully, people in those regions kept many of their local culinary traditions, and Italian cooking is still an eclectic mix of styles that depends in large part on geography. After all, Venice, Verona, Milan and Turin are closer to Munich than to Rome. What makes these styles Italian is a shared love of pasta and a preternatural genius for good cooking.

At Ca’Bianca, the Italian restaurant in Santa Rosa, this eclecticism is on display in the menu put together by the owners, husband-and-wife team Marco Diana and Karin Hoehne. Even his Italian and her German heritage reflect the influences of northern Italy.

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For instance, a pasta dish that has been on the menu for more than a decade is fusilli with salmon and asparagus in a vodka-cream sauce. Northern Italy is dairy country, hence dishes with cream and butter. Regions farther south tend to rely on olive oil for cooking and dressing ingredients, such as linguini with clams, garlic, fresh tomato and white wine.

Their linguini would pair beautifully with the 2009 Greco di Tufo from Campania, a white wine grown in the volcanic soils near Mount Vesuvius. A bottle is just $29, and you’ll find many bottles nicely priced on the wine list. Yes, there are plenty of local wines, but also dozens of Italian wines.

If you’ve never had an amarone, try the 2008 Luigi Righetti for $60, or to see what Italian varieties can do here, buy a bottle of the well-aged 2004 Aglianico, an Italian red variety from Seghesio winery in Healdsburg for $52. Or bring your own and pay $15 corkage.

Ca’Bianca’s setting is the restored Marshall House, an 1876 Victorian mansion that is an outstanding example of the workmanship lavished on homes for the wealthy in that era. Notice the detail in the ceramic fireplaces, the carved ceiling moldings, crystal chandeliers, inlaid floors and stained glass. A side porch has been closed in and gives the restaurant an extra complement of tables. Those are real roses in the bud vases on the tables, too.