Basi Italia

Basi Italia is a very good restaurant, and with just a little tweaking, it could truly be great. If I weren't making it my personal mission to dissect every aspect of an establishment, I could find little for which to fault the cozy little place tucked into an alley in Victorian Village, at 811 Highland street. So let's just get those faults out of the way:
1. the paper menus were dirty; not unforgivable, but the wine list was particularly filthy and in my book, that's just unappetizing.
2. The service was not professional, and not particularly attentive. Glasses were delivered hot from the dishwasher for white wine, which our server addressed by saying "let those sit for a minute, they're kind of warm." He disappeared for quite some time on multiple occasions, namely, when we needed something--more wine, or the check (which seems a particularly difficult trick, as we could see every inch of the dining room and the kitchen--then again, it was 'Vino on the Veranda' night)
 3. My personal pet peeve is visiting Italian restaurants which don't offer espresso. Basi Italia does not...and as our server confessed, the regular coffee offered is 'not so good'.

Ok. Now that that's out of the way--the very good stuff.

1. A well-rounded and reasonably priced wine list, from which we sampled an excellent 'Charles and Charles' Rose and a tasty Pinot Grigio.
2. Delicious appetizers/salads, of which we tried the Baby Iceberg Wedge with Pancetta and gorgonzola, Grilled endive with roasted Peach, Baby pecorino (I actually didn't write down this cheese, so I'm not sure this is accurate, but it was bordering on stinky, melty, and quite good) and toasted walnuts and the nearly ethereal Parmesan Creme Brulee, served with olives and olive-oily toast points. Shortly before our appetizers arrived, we were served a cute little paper lined glass of house-made, satisfyingly salty, savory biscotti.

3. Good sized portions of entrees, with obviously fresh and local (where applicable) ingredients.
We had the Grilled Shrimp special, with sweet corn, tomatoes, pesto and couscous, the Lobster Capellini--served with a beautiful half-Lobster tail perched atop the pasta and some pretty pea shoots (again--not sure they were pea shoots, but that's my best guess--crunchy and mild in flavor,) and candy-colored baby heirloom tomatoes, the Mustard-crusted Trout (though for having 'mustard' in the title, it just tasted like breading to me) which featured a salad of pickled onions and peppers and the same possibly pea-shoots and the Potato Gnocchi with mushrooms, grape tomatoes and sweet corn.

4. Tasty desserts of manageable portions. These are not your 'chocolate volcano', 'death by chocolate' or 'big as your face carrot cake'-variety desserts. We tried a lemon cheesecake with blueberry sauce, which was very light, and not too lemony or saccharine-sweet. We also tried a chocolate dessert--small slabs of rich dark chocolate interspersed with coconut and dried cherries, served with berries, obviously fresh whipped cream, and raspberry coulis...which would have been perfect with an espresso.

All in all, I found Basi Italia to be quite pleasing. The novelty of finding such a cute restaurant, with worthwhile food, in the back alley of a likewise cute neighborhood is enough to warrant a recommendation. I'm looking forward to returning on another 'Vino on the Veranda' night--to find out just what our server was getting into.