Salt can make or break nearly any dish: Too much, and the dish is rendered inedible; too little, and the dish is bland.

It brings together everything from salads to desserts. Complex flavors develop; savory hints of subtle flavors appear with the right amount. Wars have been fought over it. It might be the single most important element in food.

Young or inexperienced chefs are often unsure of salt—how much to use, what should be salted. Of course, how much salt is a personal preference, one that must be taken into careful consideration by the chef.

But out of respect for the food, don’t just skip the salt.

My first dinner visit to Amici Ristorante Italiano required lots of added salt. The appetizers, a mussel special ($11.99) and a fried calamari special ($10.99), which are apparently almost always on special (Why not just put them on the menu?) lacked the punch that a little well-timed salt would have added. Adding table salt after cooking only adds a salty flavor to the outside, instead of developing and accentuating the flavor of the food. Most restaurant kitchens use kosher salt during the cooking process, because the salt flakes are larger and less uniform, allowing them to dissolve. The mussels, described by our server as cooked in a spicy white-wine sauce, were not at all spicy and were extremely overcooked, making them tough and chewy. The six slices of garlic bread they were served with were so overwhelmed by butter and oil that they were completely inedible, the only detectable flavor being grease. The calamari was slightly better, with a nice, crunchy texture, but was bland until doused in lemon.

Our server was robotic and over-recited, coming to the table and interrupting with questions an annoying amount of times. After the appetizers and two spoonfuls of the disappointing mushroom spinach marinara soup—which tasted like nothing more than stereotypical marinara sauce (also lacking salt)—I was not looking forward to entreés. The kitschy Italian decor and loud Italian music were not helping matters.

After 10 or so visits to the table, our server dropped off our entrées, a gnocchi Sorrento ($14.99) and a scalloppina picata (sic) ($19.99). The gnocchi was a beautifully presented plate, with a large portion with shaved Parmesan and a big, fresh basil leaf adorning the pile of steaming pesto-coated gnocchi. The scalloppina was two tiny, thin veal cutlets, maybe as large as my palm, served with piccata sauce (traditionally lemon, capers and white wine), fried potatoes and veggies. It smelled lovely—piccata is one of my favorite Italian dishes—but I thought the portion size was quite small for the price.

Again, both dishes suffered from a lack of precision in execution. The gnocchi tasted as though the water it was cooked in was not salted (a big no-no when it comes to pasta); it was slightly overcooked and therefore chewy, and the pesto was bland. The piccata had the opposite problem: There were too many capers, which didn’t appear to be rinsed of their super-salty brine, making the dish almost unbearably salty. The thin, delicate veal had the tenderness cooked out of it, and none of the side dishes had ever seen a flake of salt.

The only bright spot in the meal was, thankfully, dessert. The cream caramel ($3.99) was a flan-like cooked cream with caramel, beautifully presented and absolutely delicious. It was rich and creamy and disappeared from the plate very quickly.

I hoped that my second visit would show improvement; perhaps an inexperienced chef was in the kitchen on visit No. 1, or perhaps it was just an off night. We attempted to stop by for a dinner on a Saturday, only to find that the restaurant had closed 45 minutes early. (Amici’s lunch menu offers smaller portions of many of the same items.) We tried again on Sunday night, successfully this time. We had the same server.

Our appetizer, the antipasto platter ($10.99), arrived in short order. Dinner was off to a good start, thanks to a nice selection of cured Italian meats; lots of briny, pungent olives that popped in your mouth; fresh mozzarella slices; and fresh greens. The tomato slices were a little under-ripe, but not so much so that it ruined the flavor.

Our soup and salad also offered encouraging signs. The tortellini en brodo ($4.50 for a small bowl) was hot and filled with plump, fresh tortellini and veggies. The Amici insalata ($8.99) was another delight of cured meats and fresh cheese on a large pile of fresh greens. The dressing reminded me more of a Caesar than an Italian, but was nice and complemented the other flavors nicely. I was pleasantly surprised with the first few courses.

Entrées took a while to arrive, and were not particularly hot or appetizing when they did arrive. The lasagna bolognese ($13.99) was not a nice slice of lasagna, but a pile of unlayered noodles, ground meat, cheese and an overwhelming amount of sauce messily piled on a plate. The spaghetti oceanica ($15.99) was an overwhelmingly yellow pile of noodles with yellow and white bits of vegetables and fish. A little color would have done the presentation a big favor. The lasagna was swimming in overly sweet marinara sauce; it was otherwise bland, again lacking the crucial touch of salt. The spaghetti oceanica suffered from the same problem: Noodles were flavorless and on the verge of being soggy, and the chunks of various fish and shellfish were lacking much flavor.

Not wanting a dismal ending to the meal, we decided to try out a classic Italian dessert, tiramisu ($5.99), with a nice glass of limoncello ($5.99). Again, the dessert was excellent. The ladyfingers, soaked in espresso, still were a little crisp, and the flavors of the tiramisu blended beautifully. The limoncello was served ice-cold, a lovely accompaniment to dessert.

Italian food is not particularly difficult to make, but it is extremely difficult to make well. It takes precision, execution and an intimate understanding of the ingredients. Amici has the desserts down, but the rest of the menu needs a little perfecting.

This article appears in Dec 17-23, 2009.

6 replies on “Pass the Salt”

  1. As a loyal customer and grateful fan of Amici Ristorante Italiano, I feel obligated to say that Ms. Kuder’s “Pass the Salt” review was factually inaccurate in several ways and baffling in many others. Her description of the mussels dish (which is sometimes served as a special — certainly not near-constantly as she claimed) is nothing like the actual item. I had to laugh at her complaint that the servers are “annoying” because they ask “questions.” They are attentive, just as all wait staffers are supposed to be, and just as most restaurants’ customers wish their waiters were! While there’s no accounting for taste, I found her “too little salt!” refrain bizarre as well, since I like food salty and have never had that opinion of Amici’s fare, nor have any of the friends I have brought.
    Amici is, without a doubt, the best Italian food in Tucson, and when there, I am constantly surrounded by delighted customers. The gourmet chef, who is from Genoa, has been at the top of the business for 25 years and rightfully so. There is no downside: waiting time tends to be very short, the menu is extensive, the food is authentic and delicious, and the portions are huge. For a more fitting review, see the Daily Star’s “Attn: Geniuses at Work” at http://www.azstarnet.com/altsn/default/foo… .

  3. I completely agree with the first post made by Chloe. I have been a loyal customer since they opened and have never had anything but a pleasant experience. The information placed in this review is indeed not completely accurate, every time I have been there, I have never seen the Cozzata served with 6 pieces of garlic bread. Might I also note that the cozzata pictured in the article also only has 3 pieces of garlic bread. I also found the information about the “mere” 2 pieces of veal inaccurate as well. Every time I have gone there, I have seen no less than 3 pieces of well proportioned veal on the plate.

    As one must know, people have different tastes. If you over salt a dish, you can’t take it out. Using little salt seems to be the safe way to go because there is always plentiful salt in the shakers on the table. That is what they are there for, why not use them? I have never found that Cozzata tasted good with a lot of salt anyways, it would make the mussels taste less fresh and take away from the taste.

    Again, I’m not sure where she found that the staff there was annoying. As a patron many times to the restaurant, I have never had a bad server. They are attentive to me and my guests needs and are quite friendly unlike a lot of restaurant staff. I would rather a server come too much to the table rather than a server who you can never get a hold of.

    Amici’s owner is also extremely friendly and knows how to cook. I have seen quite a lot of people go up to talk to him to compliment him on his food, never to tell him how little salt he uses. This man knows how to cook and I believe a lot of patrons would agree, as well with Chloe above, that this is the best Italian food that you can get in town. If you like to over salt your food, that’s your prerogative, but it is most certainly not the fault of the cook.

  4. I find this review to be rather bizarre. First of all, saltiness is not the only flavor on anyone’s palate, but it is virtually they ONLY flavor ever mentioned in this review. This is made worse by the fact that quality of Italian cuisine is rarely measured by its saltiness. If I asked a friend about how a pesto, alfredo, or meat sauce tasted and received a response that focused on salt content, I would be fairly confused. I’d expect to hear about texture, balance, and savoriness before saltiness.

    That being said, even given this reviewer’s salt obsession there are certain aspects that seem strange… i.e. “The gnocchi tasted as though the water it was cooked in was not salted (a big no-no when it comes to pasta)”. So basically an Italian chef forgot how to cook pasta? Please describe exactly what gnocchi tastes like when the water is unsalted… is it just less salty? harder? softer? or is the mention of some alleged unsalted water supposed to be informative as to how the dish actually tasted?

    How about “none of the side dishes had ever seen a flake of salt.” Mind telling us what the side dishes were? How about their non-salt based qualities like texture, savoriness, sweetness, etc?

    Regarding the server… she was too attentive? Did she refill your water too many times? I sincerely doubt most reviewers consider an especially attentive wait-staff to be a negative attribute in a restaurant. Perhaps you could have asked her whether this chef used kosher salt, or how much, since you opine as to how ‘most’ chefs use it (the implication being this chef did not, despite no evidence being given).

    It seems to me that this article is a series of pot-shots at the chef, implying at various points that he is inexperienced, inept, or sloppy. I have eaten several times at Amici’s and each time I had some of the best Italian cuisine I’ve ever ordered. I am very appreciative of the amount of salt, especially on the gnocchi Sorrento. Who in their right mind wants a salty pesto sauce? it ought to be creamy and rich (characteristics whose presence or absence are unmentioned throughout this review)

    What really bothered me was this line, “The kitschy Italian decor and loud Italian music were not helping matters”. I have a very difficult time discerning voices from background noise, and music playing at restaurants almost always disables me from following conversations. In fact, I’d say this is the first thing I note when eating at a new restaurant. Amici’s music is no-where near loud enough to impair even my ability to hear my companions, and faded nicely into the background. This is something I’m very picky about, and I can hardly imagine how loud you must find other restaurants in Tucson to be.

    Also, you could have asked your waitress about the decor; I think you’d find several of the art pieces are authentic/reproduced Italian works. Though I suppose it would be hard for you to call the pieces ‘kitschy’ in that light.

  5. I’ve been to Amici several times, and everything I’ve gotten was quite tasty.

    That said, the comments before mine have obviously never had to suffer through the waitress that the Weekly’s reviewer got stuck with. Seriously, some of the worst service that I’ve ever had.

    She’s not too attentive, it isn’t that you get your water refilled too much. It’s that she comes over and asks questions. And lingers on your answers. And asks more questions. Questions that aren’t useful to a good dining experience. She makes comments that are annoying. It was really, really terrible service. I’ve had other servers there who did a good job. But this one particular girl should not be a waitress.

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