Great Outdoors: Bonterra Trattoria

In the heat of our short-lived Calgary summers, between thunder-storms and rainy days, local patios and decks are filled to capacity. We Calgarians want so badly to dine outside, to cling to those few warm evenings with which we are blessed.

And restaurateurs try so hard to make it happen. Patios are ringed with walls to block out traffic sounds and hold in warmth, heaters are installed and umbrellas are raised. It’s summer, dammit.

One of the best of the local patios is at Bonterra Trattoria, and it shines.

Sheltered from the elements, landscaped with huge pots and planters and redolent with contemporary-rustic Italian cuisine, Bonterra’s outdoor patio is like a Mediterranean grotto, sans water.

We call it contemporary-rustic Italian. They call it “Outrageous Italian.”

Here’s what we mean. Chef Glen Manzer, one talented guy, does a menu that is packed with Italian classics — spaghetti with meatballs, linguine carbonara, osso bucco. But while adhering to tradition, he puts a modern spin on his dishes.

For example, he makes a surf ’n’ turf of seared Arctic char and Italian sausage, topped with a lobster sauce and sided with cabbage. Interesting, eh? He adds depth to the linguine carbonara by replacing the pancetta with wild-boar bacon. And while he’s at it, in go a few chilies.

His lamb shank osso bucco is plopped onto a pumpkin polenta and heightened with a chestnut gremolata. And a bowl of freshly made fettuccini is melded with braised duck, grapes, pistachios, white truffle oil and porcini mushrooms. A little rustic, a little contemporary; it’s enough to make one ignore the thunderheads rolling in and simply enjoy the food and the surroundings, outside or in.

Bonterra has been around since early 2000.

A restaurant called Virginia’s was there before that and, many years ago, the building housed the presses for The Albertan newspaper. The Albertan morphed into the Calgary Sun in the early 1980s and the presses were pulled out and moved to the northeast — but their marks remain on Bonterra’s concrete floor.

The main room is an airy brick space with a kitchen in one corner and a wine wall that goes all the way to the ceiling. A short set of stairs takes you up to a smaller, cozier dining area — the place where the press offices used to be. A second wall of wine separates the two dining rooms and black-clad staff move stealthily about. Bonterra exudes an air of confidence and maturity.

A few years back, it went though the phase of being one of the “hot new places.” Always busy, hard to get into, a little full of itself. Part of the Creative Restaurants group that spawned Catch and also owns Wildwood Pub & Grill, Bonterra has had its ups and downs over the years, but has grown quietly into one of the better restaurants in the city.

It’s reliable, even if our weather isn’t. The wine list is solid, especially in Italian wines, and has a broad range of prices. The service is professional and the food is darned good.

The dessert list — panna cotta, tiramisu — is perhaps the most traditional part of the menu. Manzer knows how to satisfy the palate and the gullet at the same time. You won’t leave feeling peckish after one of his meals. You’re more likely to depart discussing how the heck the chef came up with the combos he does.

Take, for example, a dish of pan-seared halibut drizzled with mint salsa verde, served with a pea and carrot puree and a polenta spiked with house-cured prosciutto. There’s a lot of Italian thinking going on with this plate, yet little we’d identify as purely Italian. But the flavours are rich and sultry, no ingredients are skimped on and the pea-carrot-corn troika turns into an explosion of summer freshness. And it’s all done without overpowering the halibut. Nice work.

So, on a warm summer evening, you may find us in a slight stupor on Bonterra’s patio, swept away from the city by platefuls of flavour. And on a chilly winter night, we might be inside, dreaming of Mediterranean grottos while sipping a silky Italian red. But in our minds, we’ll still be on the patio.

Bonterra Trattoria is located at 1016 8 St. S.W., 403-262-8480.