Edmonton’s first Italian spuntini bar opened adjacent to its companion restaurant, the high-end Corso 32. Daniel Costa, the creative genius behind both, can be found behind the long bar of Bar Bricco, slicing freshly cured meats for the various sharing plates offered.
The quality of food is comparable to Corso 32, but the atmosphere and price point make Bar Bricco a more casual fine dining experience. The bar’s motto, “no reservations,” recognizes the shift from Corso’s infamously long wait list to Bricco’s drop-in attitude.
Bar Bricco borrows Costa’s signature homemade pasta from Corso 32, but you won’t find any hearty, meal-sized dishes on the menu; plates like the egg yolk raviolo offer only a few bites of the savoury pasta. A single raviolo, creatively shaped like a sunny-side-up egg, conceals a land mine of creamy parmigiano and smooth egg yolk. One bite and I close my eyes, imagining my taste buds exploding from the flavour overload.
Another pasta masterpiece is the fonduta agnolotti dal plin, which are bite-sized ravioli served with a melted sage butter and a generous pile of shredded parmigiano. We’re warned not to try to cut the pasta, or risk losing all the filling in the butter, and, lo and behold, that happens more than once.
We choose a salumi tasting plate from the 10 meat options. It comes with six different pork products, including an incredible porchetta that’s prepared in-house. We pair it with an aged pincion from the cheese menu and a truffle and black pepper honey. The combination of textures and flavours is phenomenal. (10347 Jasper Ave., phone number N/A, barbricco.com)
