BEST RESTAURANT KENNEBUNKPORT

• Featured in the March issue of " Down East" magazine :
  "Dining Down East - Grissini, Kennebunkport Maine"
• As featured on "Taste of the Seacoast" website:
  "Signature Dishes"

Signature Dishes

Continue exploring Kennebunkport with a visit to Grissini - the Italian word for breadstick - a wonderful Italian restaurant at 27 Western Avenue. Grissini is stunning inside, with warm, golden walls, open beams, and a massive stone fireplace at one end. Candelabras and flowers adorn many of the tables. Black-and-white checkerboard floor and Italian art clearly capture the essence of the Old Country. Their specialty dishes are based on northern Italian classics. They opened in 1996, and their offerings have clearly struck a chord with locals and visitors alike.

Grissini offers baskets of warm breadsticks (of course), and a diverse array of salads and antipasti. The menu changes frequently, but these samplings give an idea of what everyone's talking about. For salads, the classic Caesar is always a favorite with its mix of hearts of romaine, shaved Parmesan cheese, garlic croutons, and garlic-anchovy dressing. Another distinctive choice is the Polenta Verde, which is mixed greens, polenta croutons, grape tomatoes, Kalamata olives, and fresh Mozzarella with a balsamic vinaigrette. Among the antipasti selections there is always homemade soup, plus traditional offerings such as fried calamari with lemon aioli and salsa puttenesca, or Involtini, a smoked salmon with Ricotta, capers, and a lemon-artichoke-caper vinaigrette.

Diners love the open kitchen at Grissini, which features a wood-burning grill. The grill allows them to create unique dishes such as their farm-raised chicken with cippolini onions and wood-grilled asparagus--already a classic. Equally flavorful is their wood-grilled salmon with sautéed shitake mushrooms; served with spinach, garlic mashed potatoes, and a balsamic butter sauce. Or try the Agnello, a braised honey glazed lamb shank with spicy barlotti beans and arugula pesto. "Just about anything we do on the grill becomes a customer favorite," says Lee Fopeano, general manager. "Customers love seeing their dishes created and the flavor combinations are amazing."

Their brick-oven pizza is famous and constantly in demand. If you love cheese, try their Formaggi, which is loaded with Fontina, Mozzarella, Gorgonzola and Parmesan cheese, accented with a dash of garlic oil. Fans of combinations go for the Pancetta Affumicata which is topped with tomato sauce, caramelized onions, roasted red peppers, smoked bacon and goat cheese. But the number one choice is The Margherita, a classic, topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil.

What would an Italian restaurant be without homemade pasta? Grissini doesn't disappoint, presenting a wide selection including Burina, a fresh fettuccini mixed with peas, onions, prosciutto, and parmesan in a light cream sauce; Cannelloni, featuring stuffed pasta sheets of beef, Mozzarella and Parmesan with tomato sauce, and a of penne pasta with Bolognese meat sauce, and Parmigianino Regina.

The dessert offerings are all classics, including crème brulée, chocolate mousse and of course, tiramisu. "The Tiramisu is a house favorite," says Lee. "It is a traditional Tuscan dish. We make our own sponge--we don't use lady fingers. It's then laced with espresso and Mascarpone mousse, and dusted with powdered chocolate. We serve lots of them each night."

Tuscany evokes images in the mind: stone villages, palazzi and churches, soft hills, olive groves. But there are five senses, and images do justice to only one. There is also the sound of a place, the fragrance, the feel, and the flavor. For those who wish they were in Tuscany but find themselves instead on the coast of Maine, there is a way to indulge in an authentic Tuscan experience by spending an evening at one of the softly lit tables at Grissini in Kennebunk's Lower Village, just a few doors from the Village Paperie.

From the outside, Grissini merges comfortably with its clapboard neighbors, not surprisingly since it was once a private home. The dining room, built over the former pool, is barn like and airy with exposed beams and simple décor, dominated by a huge stone fireplace, which warms the room on chilly nights. Visually one might still me in northern New England, but there are aromas in the air that don't seem to fit the latitude, and once the generous basket of Tuscan bread and grissini (bread sticks) is placed on the table, northern Italy is suddenly a good deal closer than one might think.

Tuscan food has peasant roots. It is simple cuisine, straightforward and hearty, built around the essentials: bread, soup, and olive oil. But simplicity in cooking offers its own particular challenges. Without the subtle tastes of sauces and spices, food has nothing to hide behind. And hiding behind a sauce is that last thing chef Sebastien Pfeiffer wants to do.

"We offer two or three flavors on each plate," he says.

"We do not touch the food too much. So everything must be fresh. Everything must be the best."

Not touching the food means that flavor must be coaxed out of the ingredients not imposed on them. "We do not rush the product," he says. "If the osso buco (braised veal) takes three hours, then we wait three hours."

Pfeiffer, who is also head chef at the White Barn Inn in Kennebunk, has been cooking since he graduated from culinary school in his native France at the age of seventeen. "In France, we begin very young," he smiles. "I began studying when I was fourteen." Now thirty-one, he has been involved with Grissini since its opening in 1996.

"Our fish is caught the day we serve it. We get it from the fishermen, we and salt and pepper, a little olive oil, and put it on the wood grill. Our produce comes in every day from the Boston markets. Our pasta and pastries and bread - these we make ourselves."

There is simple elegance to food prepared so carefully, with such a light touch. Although light is hardly a word that can be used to describe Grissini's thick soups. Their pappa pomodoro, a hearty tomato and Tuscan bread soup, is a meal in itself. So, too, are the salads, which are gargantuan feasts of fresh greens with various cheeses, tomatoes and olives. The antipasto menu also includes bruschetta, tomatoes, and mozzarella on grilled bread, and several offerings featuring grilled meats and poached fruit with parma ham.

Pizza enthusiasts have half a dozen choices, from classics like margherita (tomato, basil and mozzarella) through carciofi (pesto, goat cheese, tomato, artichoke) and bianco (cream cheese, red onion, smoked bacon). There are also six pasta dishes and eight entrees on the regular menu, as well as nightly specials.

Like the salads, entrée servings are generous to a fault: many Grissini customers can be seen toting home a good portion of his dinner in a well-wrapped container. For the main course, choices include the restaurant's signature dish, pollo alla rustica (chicken over garlic mashed potatoes with a lemon black pepper sauce), and a variety of other dishes including veal and calamari, and grilled seafood: salmon, tuna, lobster and catch of the day. Among one recent night's specials was agnello alla griglia, wood-grilled leg of lamb served over braised cannelloni beans.

Grissini offers a good selection of pasta dishes including fettuccine with chicken and a lasagna-like cannelloni di carne. Linguini con vongole e asparagi is a particularly luscious linguini dish combining mahogany clams and slivers of asparagus with sauce of clam broth, olive oil, garlic, parsley, and Pinot Grigio.

Vegetarians also have several options. There are two vegetarian pasta selections on the menu, risotto con funghi (risotto with mushrooms) and rotini al pesto with green beans, tomatoes and goat cheese, and one in the secondi (entrée) section, Portobello alla griglia, a mushroom zucchini pancake topped with pesto.

But save room for dessert. These are fabulous indeed, especially the rich and delicate tiramisu, a layered delight, and the surprisingly chocolate cannoli. Curiously no espresso is offered on the menu, but a good after-dinner wine or a bracing brandy may soften the blow of the lack of a strong Italian roast.

Manager Lee Fopeano, who has been with the restaurant since its inception, notes that, despite its simple elegance, Grissini is a place where "everyone is made welcome".

To make people welcome, especially in the colder months, local musicians are invited to play in the restaurant, and singers provide live opera music for dinners. On Monday nights through April, the restaurant features the cuisine of different areas of Italy with three-course dinners representing the most distinctive dishes of each region, and a wine expert is on hand to discuss regional wines. In the summer, diners can enjoy their meals on the patio under the stars.

"When we first opened," Fopeano recalls, "people would come in and say, 'What? No clam chowder?' But now our regular customers notice whenever we change anything on the menu. Of course, authenticity is something we will never change. We have resisted Americanizing the menu. This is not an Italian-American restaurant. Authentic Northern Italian - this is what Laurie envisioned from the beginning.

"But when asked about his vision, Laurie Bongiorno, founder and owner of Grissini, gently demurs. Vision, he says, suggests something too complicated. Instead, opening Grissini was "a simple business decision." Bongiorno, who also owns the remarkable White Barn Inn, wanted to create a casual restaurant serving food at a reasonable price that would draw people who enjoyed dining out more than once a week.. Tuscan fit the bill.

"Northern Italian food lends itself to this," he says. "Italians are not too fussy with food. They use fresh ingredients, cook them for taste elements, and put them on a plate. Italians, especially northern Italians, are fairly religious about simple ingredients.

"Simple ingredients, comfort, the pleasure of a good meal, a cheerful fire in the hearth of winter, an outside patio in summer - all combine to make Grissini a unique bit of northern Italy in southern Maine. Still, there must be some subtle magic involved in creating such simple pleasures. So what is the secret?

"It is in the olive oil," says Chef Sebastien. "Every olive grove is different, and every grower presses his olives differently. We have found the perfect olive oil."

This secret, the perfect olive oil, is modestly offered with the generous basket of Tuscan bread that arrives at one's table almost before the menu. But here is another secret. In the face of the temptation of freshly baked Tuscan bread and perfect olive oil, remember what your mother always warned you about. Don't spoil your appetite! Generous helpings will soon be set before you. A salad piled a half a foot high. A soup thicker than Maine fog. Enough cannelloni beans to sink the Titanic. Pasta lovingly drenched in perfect olive oil. Pastries to die for. So, diners beware! Don't fill up on bread unless you want to carry the rest of your dinner home in a Tuscan doggy bag. - Agnes Bushnell

Grissini is located at 27 Western Avenue at the junction of Route 35 and Route 9, in the Lower Village, Kennebunk.
There is parking behind the restaurant.

Dinner is served from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm daily except Saturdays when the hours are 5 - 9.
The restaurant is not open for lunch.

Prices for pizza range from $10.95 - $12.95, and for pasta and entrees from $16.95 - $21.95.

Experience Grissini, one of the best casual dining restaurants in Kennebunkport. Simply make your restaurant reservations online, make an online enquiry or call us on +1 207 967 2211 and we will be happy to make a reservation.