This is a {Snapshot} of Scampo. The original, more detailed post can be found here.
Spring is in full force here and many restaurants are rolling out their spring menus. Scampo contacted me a couple weeks ago and asked me whether I wanted to try some of their new spring dishes. I've never really thought of Scampo as the type of place that changes its menu a lot so I was curious how they would incorporate spring ingredients into their current line up.
Mozzarella from the Mozzarella Bar with king crab, cocktail avocado & green mustard oil
We had a HUGE meal! They ended up giving us a nice mix of popular favorites (such as the appetizer shown above which was on the menu when I visited in 2011) as well as a great overview of their spring-focused menu.
I'll start with our favorite dish of the entire evening (from the Mozzarella Bar section of the menu): Mozzarella with Beef Carpaccio ($20)was fantastic. The carpaccio itself was super soft and flavorful. Bryan was extremely impressed with the excellent al dente texture of the uber-thin angel hair spaghetti, which can so easily be overcooked (and so often is!) due to its size. The spaghetti was delicious, tossed with spring purple garlic and hot red pepper. I loved it.
The Hand Cut Serrated Egg Pappardelle which came with a sauce of chervil, English peas, and pancetta ($14/$24) was rich, buttery, and flavorful but suffered in texture. The fresh pasta was wayyy overcooked - almost melt-in-you-mouth soft. I guess if you like really mushy pasta and don't enjoy chewing, it might not seem so bad. However, we tend to prefer pasta with a nice al dente bite, and thus we were a bit disappointed.
Scampo has a huge brick oven in the center of the restaurant and they cook plenty of cool breads, pizzas, and other items inside. This individual sized pizza (really, almost enough to serve 2 people) was topped with applewood smoked bacon cured in apple cider, smashed plantains, and ricotta cheese. Though unusual, it was actually pretty tasty and reheated nicely the day after as well.
Bryan love duck fat fries (he claims Michael Mina's restaurant in San Francisco offers incredible duck fat fries for free instead of bread!), so he was excited to see these Duck Fat Fries with Truffle Aioli ($9) on the menu. These were nice fries, and you could taste the fresh potato flavor in each stick, not something you necessarily experience in more processed fries. I wished they were a bit crispier, and we felt they were undersalted (easily remedied, of course). The truffle flavor was pretty faint - I'm not sure I really tasted it. I still give a significant edge to my favorite truffle fries on the other side of the river.
This next dish screams spring: Delicate Mushroom Gnocchi with Grilled Lobster Tail and Spring Ramps ($18/$28). The dish was solid - the gnocchi is quite starchy and soft (almost gummy), not my favorite type of texture. The flavors of the dish were nice, though it was tough to share the single, lone grilled ramp on top of the dish. I wished for a few more!
Bryan really enjoyed the next entree, Blackened Flatiron Steak ($38) which came with fried polenta sticks and mashed sweet potatoes. The beef was super tender and cooked to a nice medium rare. The sauce was flavorful and overall the dish was quite good.
Though this may not be the prettiest dish to look at, the Chilean Sea Bass ($36) surprised us. We had never tried oven-roasted sweet cabbage, but it was really, really good! It reminded us of the way we make Brussels sprouts at home - crispy, light, yet flavorful, just a tad bitter and sweet at the same time. Not surprisingly, the cabbage here is topped with crisped shaved Brussels sprout leaves, which may explain the association.
The fish itself was unusually sweet (almost like there was honey or something on top). It was OK, but I almost wished for a bit more umami to balance it out. The lobster risotto underneath was pretty tasty (though not particularly memorable). 
We were pretty full at this point but we knew we had to try some dessert. This Chocolate Peanut Roulade was excellent. It's made with high quality dark chocolate and filled with a dark chocolate mousse. I found it to be just a tad sweet, but my other friend who loves chocolate desserts thought it was insanely good. I really enjoyed the peanut caramel on the side. The malted vanilla ice cream, though underwhelming on its own as far as ice creams go, worked well with the rest of the components. If you like anything with peanuts and chocolate, you can't go wrong with this dish.
The Lemon Sabayon Tart was already delicious on its own, but the accompaniments really made it shine. It comes with a blackberry Merlot sauce, blueberry ice cream, and a crunchy lime tuile. I loved the blueberry ice cream and had no trouble finishing it.
Thoughts
There's a reason why Lydia Shire is so successful in Boston - her food is very good and her restaurants are well run. Except for maybe the texture of the pappardelle, there were really no misses in the entire meal. We had many dishes that we enjoyed a lot. I would most definitely go back and just taste my way through the mozzarella bar - they are so fun!
The restaurant can get loud on busy evenings (we went on the Thursday right before Memorial Day weekend). They gave us a table a little further away from the bar so it wasn't too bad, but I could imagine wishing the noise level were just a bit lower if I were sitting in a different area.
Overall, though, we are fans of Scampo and have returned on numerous occasions. Bryan likes to take his out of town coworkers there because everyone always loves the food and the restaurant's got a cool history of being inside of a jail.
Disclaimer: Scampo paid for the cost of food. We paid for alcohol and gratuity. All opinions are my own.
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[…] fun and unique place is Scampo, an excellent Italian-leaning restaurant located in The Liberty Hotel, a former prison. The […]