Assaggi Mozzarella Bar

Assaggi means "tastings," though for a while I thought it meant just plates because of the nice collection of ceramic plates on the wall. The specialty is a mozzarella plate with buffalo mozzarella, buffalo ricotta and burrata along with condiments like grilled zucchini, roasted peppers and green tomato marmalade. This is ideal for sharing and the four of us also shared the salumi plate with prosciutto, salami, speck and a couple of other cured meats.

The cheeses were creamy and delicate and paired very nicely with the condiments. While the portions were not huge, the combination of plates was enough to make us all comfortable with just ordering pasta as a main course. I got the dill tagliolini with Dungeness crab meat and green peas, which was different and tasty. Others seemed quite happy with their choices as well, though I didn't taste any of them. The hard crust bread was delicious and they brought more when you asked.

We accompanied with a very nice Aglianico, a black grape varietal from the Basilicata and Campania regions of southern Italy, which I don't think I'd ever had before. It was among the more moderately priced selections (the online menu doesn't have it so I don't have the details) and turned out to be very good value, with a rich, mineral taste, quite velvety. We liked it well enough to order a second bottle.

It's a testimony to the richness of Italian cuisine that this Bethesda restaurant can carve out its own distinctive niche among Italian offerings and introduce us to things that are new. All in all, very pleasant and worth revisiting. Note to those who care about this, it is fairly noisy and we even had a table at the end of the bench that was not in the noisiest part of the restaurant.