Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the passion in the kitchen and front of the house at Cantinetta Luca is as fresh as it was when the doors first opened. From the trattoria’s open kitchen into which diners can peer and watch the chefs in action to neighboring Salumeria Luca—deli, bakery, and gourmet market—Carmel’s Italian hub bustles with culinary activity.
Cantinetta Luca’s interior design is an attractive blend of brick, stone, glass, and chiseled wood, punctuated with rich Mediterranean colors. The wine room is a perfect setting for semi-private special events, featuring a barrel-vaulted brick ceiling with exposed, rough-hewn beams. From the dining room, diners can glimpse salumi in the works in the glass-encased cured meat-aging room.
All of Cantinetta Luca’s pasta, bread, sauces, dressings and marinades are made in-house everyday using authentic, imported Italian goods and fresh locally-sourced produce. None of that has changed. But as Luca celebrates its 10th birthday the business is evolving.
General Manager Janet Elarmo shared some of the changes already in place and a few that are on the horizon. “Though our menu is very meat-based—and our Bistecca alla Fiorentina is one of our most popular dishes—I don’t want people to think of Cantinetta Luca just as a steakhouse,” she said. The Bistecca alla Fiorentina is a large Porterhouse or T-Bone steak that typically weighs at least a kilogram, approximately 33 ounces. Each one is cut in-house on the bandsaw, trimmed, weighed, and sold by the ounce. Not many restaurants cut their own steaks on the bone. It’s pretty unique and delicious.
When Bistecca alla Fiorentina is ordered, the steaks are simply seasoned with sea salt, black pepper and grilled. While on the grill, they are lightly brushed with balsamic vinegar to give them a smoky, sweet element. The steak is allowed to rest after grilling.
When the order is ready to serve, they carve the meat off the bone, slice it, and put it back together in a black oval skillet. It is seasoned again with sea salt, black pepper and drizzled with a Tuscan olive oil. It is, then, finished in the wood-burning oven before serving.
The wood-burning oven adds function, as well as ambiance, to the 93-seat restaurant with its mix of antique and modern elements. The oven is key to a few other dishes Elarmo highlighted, including cornetto pizza and roast chicken. Shaped like its namesake, a horn, the cornetto pizza is filled with fresh mozzarella cheese and fontina, fired in the oven, then topped with prosciutto and arugula. The chicken is marinated with spices, lemon, and lemon rind. It’s cooked sous vide and finished in the wood-fired oven until it’s crispy on the outside, but remains succulent on the inside.
Like the juxtaposition of texture in the chicken, the flavor profile of their unique cocoa pasta has customers’ tastebuds happily doing somersaults. “Americans, in particular, associate cocoa only with sweet, you know, in the form of chocolate. They tend to forget that cocoa, on its own, is bitter. The cocoa in the pasta is very subtle. It has a nice bite and is counter-balanced by the richness of the braised pork cheeks,” Elarmo explained. The innovative dish also features locally foraged porcini mushrooms and braised seasonal greens from local farms.
Cantinetta Luca’s Insalata Mista showcases local farms as well. Fresh greens are drizzled with housemade dressing, made using the same recipe as when the restaurant opened. Then it’s topped with crumbled ricotta salata for a simple, but elegant presentation that makes it a customer favorite.
Next door at Salumeria Luca, the retail arm of Cantinetta Luca, housemade items are popular with beach-goers for a picnic lunch or as ingredients for home cooks. You can find breads, pizza, pasta, sauces, pastries, and gelato that are made fresh daily. The deli also features made-to-order sandwiches and grilled panini.
Both Salumeria Luca and Cantinetta Luca offer a wide range of wine choices as well which brings us to another change they’ve recently made. “We used to carry only Italian wines. There’s been a departure from that,” Elarmo said. “Now we have a lot of local and California gems as well.” You can locate hard to find bottles as well as reasonably priced wines. And everything in Cantinetta Luca’s cellar can be acquired in Salumeria Luca.
As they enter their second decade, Cantinetta Luca remains a little piece of Italy in downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea, but with a bit more local flair.
Cantinetta Luca & Salumeria Luca
Dolores btw Ocean & 7th, Carmel
About the author
Camilla M. Mann has crammed a lot of different jobs into four decades: florist, waitress, SCUBA divemaster, stock photo agency manager, stroller fitness teacher, writer, editor, and au pair. But, if she had to distill who she is today – tree-hugging, veggie-crunching, jewelry-designing mean mommy who loves to cook but hates to clean. Thankfully her husband and their boys clean like champs. Her current culinary goal: grow conscientious, creative kids with fearless palates! She blogs at culinary-adventures-with-cam.blogspot.com
