photograph by matt gossett
Smoked pork loin with jerk seasoning, dirty rice, mango and jalapeño salsa, and candied oranges.
A restaurant’s neighborhood is often part of its flavor profile. Ecco on Overton Park happens to be part of my neighborhood, and I walked there recently for dinner. Strolling up to the door may be the best way to experience Ecco, which feels like part of the tree-lined ambiance outside. I recommend it, whether exploring the adjacent streets beforehand, walking from the park or zoo, or simply sitting on the front patio facing Overton Park Avenue.
Ecco has embraced wholeheartedly its locale in the center of the Evergreen Historic District, the restaurant’s website noting that “surrounding residents have become regulars of the eatery and turned the restaurant into a place of familiar faces and neighborly love.” Indeed, it’s a beautiful perch, situated under the classic stone-chiseled façade of a former Masonic lodge built in the early 1920s.
photograph by matt gossett
Burrata salad with roasted peaches, crispy prosciutto, and white balsamic and honey vinaigrette.
Inside, diners can choose among many nooks and corners for a cozy evening, not to mention an old-school bar. This time, I opted for the covered Garden Room in the back, full of tables in tranquil, candlelit spaces. The woodwork also makes for good acoustics when Roy Brewer plays classical and flamenco guitar there on weekends.
Once you peruse the menu, Ecco’s focus becomes clear. With appetizers like pinzimonio and fritto misto, or pastas like tre formaggi ravioli, trofie al pesto, and bucatini all’ amatriciana, the Italian provenance of the cuisine is clear, just in case you hadn’t deduced that from the restaurant’s name itself. (“The name comes from an Italian phrase that loosely translates to ‘the place to be,’” according to Ecco management.)
The fact that Ecco describes itself as both “Mediterranean-inspired” and “house-made Italian” should be a clue to the menu’s disparate influences. That’s been the restaurant’s aesthetic from the beginning, says chef Armando Gagliano. While his mother, Sabine Bachmann, owns the place (along with Libro and Tonica), Gagliano runs it with his two brothers, and says Ecco has always been eclectic.
“It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Our classroom/kitchen was right on the banks of the Mediterranean. You could see exactly where a lot of the ingredients came from, just swimming around right outside of the window.” — Armando Gagliano
“She and I were here day one,” he says of Ecco’s beginnings a decade ago. “We wanted to do kind of a lunch deal, with soup, salads, and sandwiches. And we did lunch for a while, but we pivoted at the last moment and went with the dinner route. I prepared this menu, and we had some higher-end items on there, like scallops, steaks, things like that. Yet she was a little apprehensive about the neighborhood wanting to spend that kind of money, instead of staying with the same lunch style that the previous business had been.”
photograph by matt gossett
Sous vide duck breast with mushrooms, wild rice, and a port wine reduction.
Once Gagliano’s dinner items caught on, though, there was no turning back. Focusing on the evening service “turned out really well,” he says. “We’ve been selling pasta the entire time, homemade pastas, homemade ravioli, things of that nature, and once we incorporated more expensive items, like some nicely prepared chicken or salmon dishes, over time the neighborhood grew accustomed to the higher-priced items.”
Indeed, as I looked over the menu, the prices seemed quite reasonable for a fine-dining experience, doubly so because I’d arrived during happy hour. And perhaps it was that perfectly mixed gin and tonic that inspired me to splurge on something you don’t see every day: fresh New Bedford sea scallops. The century-old building, the calm professionalism of the staff, the candlelight — all seemed to cry out for the best gastronomical experience that Ecco could offer.
I could have chosen from several humbler dishes, from a variety of cooking traditions. “Ecco is centered around Italian cuisine, like all of our pastas,” says Gagliano, “except for the stroganoff, which we’ve had on the menu for a long time; that’s Russian. I’ve never wanted to have a restaurant that is solely based on one cuisine, because then you pigeonhole yourself into only cooking within the realm of that cuisine’s ingredients and style of cooking. So, outside of the pastas, when we get into the entrées and salads, I like to come up with food that tastes good, that’s maybe a little weird, a little interesting.”
That explains some of the tantalizing outliers on the menu, such as the braised bok choy, the Lyonnaise salad, the Ecco burger, or the birria marinated pork ribeye (complete with Mexican cotija cheese and roasted corn). Indeed, many of the choices don’t represent any specific ethnic cuisine, only good, solid sustenance, like the pan-roasted chicken breast, the Atlantic salmon, and the ribeye steak.
photograph by alex greene
New Bedford sea scallops with summer vegetables, marinated tomatoes, kalamata olives, cauliflower puree, and curried scallop cream sauce.
Something told me not to sleep on the pasta. For starters, I ordered the small serving of the tre formaggi ravioli, stuffed with mascarpone, fresh mozzarella, and goat cheese, sprinkled with rosemary salt, crushed pine nuts, parmesan, and fresh parsley. To accompany that, I requested that evening’s house white wine, a Spanish Albariño. With its dry notes of citrus and a hint of saltiness, it would prove to be the perfect complement to both the scallops and the ravioli.
Underscoring that it’s worth dining somewhere that does pasta right, the ravioli was perfectly executed. “We use a brown butter that’s infused with sage, and then just garnish it with a bit of fresh parsley,” says Gagliano. The almost-crisp, chewy al dente outer shells reminded me why house-made pastas are so superior, even as, from the sprinkled toppings to the sheer creaminess of the three-cheese filling, the dish offered a range of contrasting textures.
It stands to reason that Ecco would do pasta right. In 2017, three years after Ecco opened, Gagliano studied at the Italian Culinary Institute in Calabria. “It was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” he says. “Our classroom/kitchen was right on the banks of the Mediterranean. You could see exactly where a lot of the ingredients came from, just swimming around right outside of the window.”
Speaking of which, once I had cleaned my ravioli plate, the main course appeared — perhaps the most colorful scallop dish I’ve ever seen. A generous portion of seafood was surrounded by roasted carrots, zucchini, and sweet, bursting cherry tomatoes in vinaigrette. The green of sprinkled watercress set off those hues, with a smattering of kalamata olives, the entire dish grounded by the earthiness of a Mediterranean garden in the summer.
Amid that tableau, the seared scallops were nestled like the scattered doubloons of a sunken treasure. “We get our seafood from Off the Dock Seafood and Inland Seafood,” says Gagliano. “They have a wide variety of any kind of seafood you can think of, that either comes from the Gulf or the East Coast, and they ship the fish really quickly to one of their hubs, and then out to Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, or wherever. They’ve got a pretty good system to get fresh fish from the water to as far inland as Oklahoma.”
The freshness of these scallops was undeniable, and it didn’t hurt that they were done to perfection, the slightly crisp, seared exterior giving way to an almost creamy, tender center. Added to this was the most piquant element of the dish, the subtle (and very non-Italian) curried cream sauce drizzled over the scallops. Finally, all of it was surrounded by a cauliflower puree, its hummus-like consistency echoing the earthy, roasted flavor of the other vegetables.
The balance of aromas, tastes, and textures was a delight, and quite unlike any “pure” cuisine one would find at a restaurant committed to only one flavor tradition. And in the end, that’s what makes Ecco unique: Their dedication to authentic Italian cuisine never eclipses a more questing, curious approach to food. Gagliano sums it up best when he says, “I never want to come up with an idea for a dish, think, ‘Man, this is really good,’ and then be like, ‘I can’t put it on the menu because it’s not Italian.’ ”
Ecco is located at 1585 Overton Park Ave.
