Cucina Urbana revisit
Cucina Urbana
505 Laurel St,
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 239-2222
https://www.cucinaurbana.com
After a wonderful dinner at Cucina Urbana about a month ago, BF and I couldn’t wait to go back. Luckily, we were able to squeeze in a visit before Christmas.
BF and I decided to try some different dishes than last time. We started off with the daily board special, which consists of three appetizers that change daily. On this occasion, there was a bruschetta, a smoked salmon and fried sweet breads.
My favorite was the bruschetta. Usually the bruschetta I eat is made with oilive oil and tomoatoes. This one was really different, but it was really good.
We also ordered some truffle oil fries. I had seen this on the menu and thought a side order of fries for $7 was a little pricey. However, I changed my mind once they arrived because we had a huge serving of fries. The fries were thin, crisp and drenched in truffle oil. Delicious. We couldn’t stop eating this and ate every last fry.
For my main course, I chose the mushroom corzetti. This was my first experience with corzetti. When my entree arrived I was surprised by how soupy it looked. Tucked underneath all the sauce were some large rounds of pasta. The pasta tasted homemade and chewy. I could have done with less sauce, but overall I liked my dish.
BF ordered the guanciale and farm egg pizza. The egg yolk was served raw on top of the pizza. The brie in the pizza made it a little on the salty side, but what made it worse was the guanciale. Guanciale is an unsmoked italian bacon. This was our first experience with guanciale and we couldn’t believe how salty it was. Each chunk was crusted with salt. Also a lot of chunks were just chunks of pure fat. We didn’t like the pizza too much because of how salty it was.
The service was friendly and efficient and we got our food fairly quickly even though the restaurant was full. While one of the entrees was a miss, we’ll be back again to try some more dishes.
Just to clarify on the pasta, we make our own pasta in house every day. We do buy our Gluten-free pasta from Assanti. Sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy the pizza, on Thursdays during Happy Hour (3 – 6pm), all pizzas are half price, so that’s a good time to try them out and find your favorite!
yikes, this is such an old post that it makes me cringe just reading it. thanks for all the details! I do try to get more information now about the dishes before I post but I wasn’t always so detailed
When I looked over your photos, I thought your mushroom dish was a soup! Too bad about the pizza, it looks pretty. This place is still on my “to-visit” list one of these days.
I thought it was a soup too when it came out! I’m sad about the pizza too. The egg yolk on top made it look so yummy
We haven’t found any reasonable good Italian restaurants in San Diego yet and tend to go for Italian restaurants when we go regularly to LA (e.g. Osteria Mozza) or Bay Area (e.g. SPQR, Scopa, Oenotri)
Unfortunately CU isn’t making their pasta in-house but buys fresh pasta at Assanti Pasta in Little Italy. It would really push their pasta dishes to the next level if they would use their own freshly made pasta. And I agree that their pasta dishes tend to be oversauced. We had their pizza once and were very disappointed – dough too thick and mediocre combination of toppings. You can have good dishes at CU but you have to carefully select. It would be great for SAn Diego to have a good Italian restaurant.
Thanks for the info about the pasta. I’ve found the pizza dough to be too thick as well. Do you have a favorite italian restaurant in SD?
hi kirbie
it’s pretty how they decorated the restaurant for the holidays. you had some interesting choices…corzetti and guenciale! very nice!
I love the decorations too! Yeah, we decided to choose stuff we’d never had before. =)