Alta Strada
92 Central St., Wellesley, Massachusetts
781-237-6100
Our take, July 2013: This is the type of restaurant where you sit down and have a lovely lunch, tended to by knowledgeable but unobtrusive wait staff. The clean, open space allows you to see and be seen at either tables or at a bar (where you must order food if you want to consume alcohol). There was plenty of summer on the menu when we were there, and the sweet corn with smokey bacon ($6 on the antipasti menu) was fresh and delicious. The corn is served off the cob, mixed with the bacon and served in a small bowl in a portion size that is plenty big enough for two. The shrimp, grilled vegetable, and gigante bean salad with herb vinaigrette ($15) was also generously sized. I wasn’t so sure about the gigante beans, though. I expected a healthy dose of them in my salad, figuring they would give my meal an extra boost of protein, in addition to that from the shrimp, but there were only a few beans scattered about. Overall, however, it was a perfectly seasoned salad and I was glad I didn’t pull a Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally and insist on getting my dressing on the side.
My dining companion had the fingerling potato, spring onion, and taleggio pizza ($15). Taleggio cheese, as I learned, is a semi-soft Italian cheese with a fruity tang. It makes a nice pizza, and between the two of us we polished it off.
The lemonade ($3.50) was real, not the Country Time powdered mix I’ve been sustaining myself with all summer, and the ice water kept coming on this hot summer day. It was a pricey lunch, sure, but it was a serene, relaxing, and healthy lunch. We all need those, as often as we can make the time to get them.
