A Touch of Italian Regionalism for Horsham

Center City is in the throes of an Italian-restaurant growth spurt. It is, after decades of the same Southern-Italian, red-gravy-style dining, breaking out of that mold and finally experimenting with the regional cuisines of the country.

And while this proto-revolution hasn’t quite made it to the suburbs just yet on any sort of wide scale, its first stirrings can certainly be felt at Horsham’s Buona Via, a spacious new restaurant by the same team that brought the area Ristorante Mediterraneo.

I say “felt” because Buona Via is both a work in progress and still seems to be finding its footing in terms of the style and level of food it provides. But on the whole, it represents a positive step in the suburban incarnation of Philadelphia’s Italian restaurant revolution.

The menu finds its center of gravity in the cuisines of Tuscany and the more southern regions of the Mediterranean coast, though there are occasional side-trips to the north of the country (beef carpaccio with black truffle vinaigrette) and to other non-Latin cultures of the continent (mini crab cakes with a roasted pepper aioli).

This use of extra-Italian influences actually works to the restaurant’s benefit, and rather than resulting in an unclear, unfocused procession of dishes, it instead manages to center them.

Fried buffalo mozzarella ($10), for example, looked like nothing so much as a slightly grown-up breaded cheese stick, but in fact was a standout of the meal. The crust itself was surprisingly thick, but not the least bit mealy as is too often the case with this sort of appetizer. And the imported cheese possessed the pronounced lactic tang than good mozzarella di buffala should provide.

The other components of the dish spoke to the kitchen’s willingness to eschew complication and instead rely on the quality of the ingredients themselves: A light tomato sauce and sautéed spinach rounded out the dish and provided a sense of balance without overwhelming the true focus.

Smoked salmon ($10), not necessarily the first thing you expect to come across when looking over an Italian-restaurant menu, was nonetheless a successful platter of thin-sliced fish—neither too salty nor too oily (and no, it’s not smoked in-house)—anointed with a bright, herbaceous basil oil and a gently bracing lemon oil, and simply accompanied by crème fraîche, a bit of salmon roe, and baton-shaped Italian-bread croutons.

Simpler still was the mixed-green salad ($6), a fresh, well-composed spring mix dressed with a slightly sweet balsamic vinaigrette. The tomatoes, however, detracted from the experience: They were so mealy and devoid of flavor that I have no idea why they were included in the first place: This time of year, there are some wonderful cherry and grape tomatoes coming out of Israel and South America; they should be used here until next summer, when our local varieties start plumping up again.

Entrees found the same general level of success as the appetizers. Grilled jumbo shrimp ($22) were smartly charred and perfectly cooked through, and the capers in the accompanying piccata sauce provided a clever earthy component. The cannellini bean ragu, however, was unremarkable, as its aggressive starchiness threatened to overwhelm the more delicate textures of everything else on the plate.

A special of slightly gummy pappardelle ($24) with white wine, garlic, and porcinis, all of it studded with moist little pieces of duck that had been sautéed, roasted, and then pulled into tender strands, benefited from its deft balance between pasta and sauce and its judicious use of truffle oil, which, miraculously, was applied with a gentle touch. (I’ve lost count of the number of otherwise solid dishes I’ve had lately that were drowned in the stuff and rendered inedibly rich as a result.)

The only real failure I encountered was the veal with porcinis ($24), a passionless plateful of shockingly underseasoned gray veal medallions in a Barolo-demi glace nearly as devoid of flavor as the meat. Even the mushrooms possessed a perplexingly rubbery texture and briny flavor that brought no sense of either depth or sophistication to the dish.

But that was really the only true letdown. That, and that fact that the food runners could use a bit more training: Auctioning off dishes at the table (Okay, who got the pasta?) is not acceptable at a restaurant like this one. But the waitstaff was pleasant and knowledgeable, and the food was generally very good. Even the notably moist sachertorte, and the amaretto- and Gran Marnier-spiked ricotta cheese cake desserts ($7 each), which were a bit sweet for my taste, showed glimmers of what Buona Via is capable of.

There’s a lot of potential here, and with a bit more time, and a bit more attention to detail in the kitchen, Buona Via may very well grow into a suburban Italian destination. It’s not there quite yet, but it’s close. And I’m rooting for it: The neighborhood could use a place like this.