New place in town

Eastside Road, September 12, 2012—

NO IDEA WHY they have a feminine adjective modifying a masculine noun: maybe it's one more subtlety of the Italian that I don't understand. Fino means "fine" in the sense of minute, or keen, or sharp, or (sometimes) even; and when it modifies a feminine noun it ends in -a; but campo is a masculine nount (meaning, in general, "field").

And in any case this restaurant with its odd but pleasant inside-outside configuration isn't really a field, or in a field; but a former wasteland-parkinglot, I suppose. Oh, the hell with it: it's agreeable, with tables big and small under a sort of arbor, a compact bocce court alongside, kitchen areas tucked here and there, the obligatory wood-burning pizza oven, and a menu given to ciccheti, the small-plate nibbles made popular through Venetian restaurants sometime in the last decade.

There were five of us, so we ordered quite a number of these plates, passing them around:

Baccalà croquettes
Charred octopus
Tricolore salad
Panelle
Soppressata
Polenta alla Sarda

and, after playing with these, some of them twice, we ordered the special pizza of the night: piquant sausage, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and kernels of fresh sweet corn.

The croquettes were melt-in-your mouth; the octopus deeply flavorful; the panelle a kind of Italian panisse, perfect chickpea fritters with olives, chopped celery, pear sticks, and anchovy. The soppressata was very thinly sliced, house-made, quite peppery, delicious; strewn with tomato and hard-cooked egg concassées and salsa verde; the polenta was baked with sausage, gratinéed with pecorino, and strewn with basil. The menu is basically Sicilian, Sard, and southern Italian, and the wine list is nicely compatible.

Then came the desserts, which we mostly did not share around, or at least I didn't, because I really do like my cheese, and hadn't known about Latur — how long has this been going on? A delicious triple cream cheese, rather firm but yielding and pungent, served here with toasted almonds and hazelnuts and drizzled with fine local honey. Thanks, Bill.

Aglianico del Vulture, Grifalco, 2008: smooth, deep, rounded, full

• Campo Fina, 330 Healdsburg Avenue, Healdsburg, California; 707.395.4640