Review: Ca’Bianca

An appetizer of Baked Polenta ($9 **) features a slice of the typically Italian cornmeal topped with gorgonzola cheese and a rich tomato sauce. It has been baked so the cheese melts and flows down over the cornmeal, which becomes soggy from the liquid in the sauce. It tastes great, but maybe if the polenta were fried before baking it would better resist the tomato sauce.

An appetizer called Impepata ($11 **) is a bowl of eight cherrystone clams and eight undersized mussels sautéed with leeks, garlic and saffron in a lightly spicy tomato sauce. Toasted flatbread wedges are spread with pesto and accompany the shellfish.

Avocado Salad

With the Avocado Salad ($9 ***), things looked up. Half an avocado is spooned out of its skin, cut into slices and splayed out on a plate with caramelized red onions, pitted kalamata olives, chunks of ripe tomato and basil threads drizzled with olive oil.

Then came the pastas. Fluted tubes of Rigatoni ($17 **½) were studded with hunks of good Italian sausage spiced with fennel seed, sauced with rich marinara lightened with a little cream, and tossed with fresh garden peas and sliced mushrooms. A generous plate of Gnocchi ($18 **½) in a savory lamb sauce was redolent of rosemary. It had a rich, satisfying taste, although the gnocchi were small and chewy and less than cloudlike.

For a Scaloppine ($23 ***), the kitchen uses thin scallops of pork tenderloin rather than the more classic veal, and that’s a fine substitution, although pork doesn’t have quite the unctuous quality of veal. The sauce is a wine and butter reduction flavored with a bit of gorgonzola. What appear to be lardons on top are pieces of cooked pear. Vegetables on the plate — carrots, asparagus and red bell pepper — are cooked with restraint, so they have their texture and flavor intact. The plate is finished with a helping of polenta.