Vivace picks up pace

On sheet music, “vivace” means “lively.”

To a musician, it's an imperative: “Hey, you: Look alive!”

The director of my college wind ensemble would call it out in precise triplets — “Vivace! Vivace! Vivace!” — whenever he wanted our notes to sound cleaner, crisper, fresher and quicker.

At Vivace Contemporary Italian, an Old Market restaurant that has struggled a bit with identity the last several years, “vivace” has long been an apt description of the cacophony within its big, dark, exposed-brick dining room and bar on a busy night.

The term hasn't worked as well to describe the fare — until now.

A menu makeover, in the works for a year and unveiled at the 16-year-old restaurant a month ago, does much to pick up the pace.

Neapolitan-in-spirit pizzas, made-from-scratch pastas, new sandwiches and smaller appetizers (now dubbed tapas) are the most obvious changes. But the base menu, now printed in-house, also is far less static. It certainly felt lively to me when I noticed that several menu offerings had changed from one week to the next.

The entree section, served only in the evenings, is more seasonal and more locally sourced. Salad and soup aren't automatically included. Portions generally are smaller, but diners also have more choice when it comes to the price, style and duration of their meals.

While all this could feel simply like cutting back in hard times, it didn't for me on two recent visits.

Start with the complimentary house-made focaccia, offered with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a red pepper and tomato relish. Though seconds now will cost you, the first basket's still free and what's in it is still fresh and delicious.

And you could easily make a light meal of the soups, which were among the most explosively flavored dishes I tried.

One soup of the day had delicate slices of mushroom, delicious crumbled pork sausage and a goodly amount of spice. A chickpea, carrot and cranberry number (imprecisely described by our server as “chicken, pea, carrot and cranberry”) delighted with its surprisingly Moroccan flavor profile: lots of toasted African spices and a sweet-sour tang that reminded me of tamarind.

Chef Bobby Mekiney told me later that Mike Johnson made the chickpea soup, and he has a deft hand with acids. It got its tang from vinegar, cranberry and pineapple juices.

From the new tapas section, the polenta-crusted zucchini chips with roasted tomato and feta dip were a terrific summer starter. The fried (but not greasy) polenta coats gave the zucchini a fabulous crunch. The perky tomato-tinged dip was almost fluffy with whipped feta, sour cream and mayonnaise. (I didn't mind the size of the dish overall, but I did think the chips-to-dip ratio was a little out of whack. We needed more than eight or nine small chips to go with that big cup of dip — or less dip, I suppose.)

Meyer-lemon-ricotta fritters served with fresh greens also were quite good, with intense lemon flavor and golden-brown, donut-hole-like exteriors. One quibble: I wanted a little herby sauce of some sort to tie the dish together or tug it back to the savory side of the street. Alternately, I wished our server had suggested saving those sweet fritters for dessert.

The new “Neapolitan-style” pizzas lack the kiss of wood smoke and are thicker and puffier than true Neapolitan pizzas, which have very thin crusts and are cooked in a wood-fired oven.

But the sort at Vivace are similarly fresh and flavorful, and no less delicious. On ours, the bottom of the crust was crisp from edge to edge, the top bubbled and puffed. Slices didn't bend when we picked them up.

The sauce, if you can call it that, was a scant sprinkling of uncooked chopped canned tomatoes mixed with Romano cheese and just a hint of mandarin orange. Topped with fresh basil, the aroma was remarkably good: like a whiff from the garden. And the flavor: tomato personified.

Topping options were plentiful and interesting: house-made Italian sausage, caramelized fennel, “forever roasted” vegetables and more. And the cheese on most was a blend of perky Romano and milky mozzarella.

Perhaps the tramezzini, “finger sandwiches” served on crustless white bread, will go over better with folks who nibble during business lunches, but the young women I lunched with weren't all that interested. We opted instead for panini and piadini.

A flavorful chicken panini served on toasted ciabatta from Lincoln's Le Quartier Baking Co. didn't disappoint. It sported roasted meat, spinach, caramelized onions, just a little Gorgonzola cheese and a side of terrific black pepper aioli that made it sing.

And while you might never think of going to a contemporary Italian place for the French fries, those served with sandwiches were among the best I've ever had: A few flat batons of sweet potato added color to a larger pile of more thinly cut Yukon golds, crisply fried and tossed in what Mekiney later described as “peck seasoning”: a mixture of grated Romano, lemon zest, rosemary, and toasted and ground anise and coriander seed.

The lamb piadini was a good idea, but the version we got didn't quite live up to the billing. A bit like a lamb kabob with its roasted meat, feta, kalamata olives, cucumbers and lettuce, the sandwich is served not on bread or in a pita but in a big, thin, floppy, amoeba-shaped and nutty-tasting grilled tortilla. The “spicy” yogurt sauce served with ours was tart and lacked salt and heat, and the whole thing seemed to be missing something. I later realized mine didn't have the marinated tomatoes and green bell peppers mentioned on the menu. And Mekiney said the sauce usually is very spicy.

I was happy to see the return of house-made pasta and the pick-a-pasta, pick-a-sauce, pick-a-protein menu. The campanelle I chose — curled and ruffled “bell” or “bellflower”-shaped noodles — was eggy and toothsome. But I wish I'd tried it with one of the raw, naked or tomato-based sauces. The bland lobster cream sauce I paired it with seemed to deaden everything it touched, despite the layers of flavor you'd expect from the prosciutto, leeks, peas and mushrooms it contained.

Mekiney said the sauce is more typically paired with a butternut squash ravioli that was not offered on my visit. And it's better with added seafood.

I'll take his advice next time.

The only true duds for me came from the ever-changing dessert tray. A tiramisu Mekiney later confirmed is still a work in progress was prettily plated, but the cake standing in for ladyfingers was dry and the mascarpone filling flavorless. And I could have done without the basket part of a “May basket” — a soggy ruffled waffle containing vanilla ice cream, a few grapes and sliced strawberries marinated in Grand Marnier.

All the dishes, even pizzas, came out quickly. Service was pleasant and casual, if not always well informed. And pacing was nice, at least until we were ready to leave. We had a 10-minute wait after asking for the check at an otherwise speedy lunch, and it took us nearly 25 minutes to settle up after finishing dinner.

Mekiney said service and décor will get their refinements; the food is the focus this year.

But the recent changes show the restaurant has gotten serious about tasting great and feeling casual.

And I'm happy to see Vivace taking its name not for granted, but as its marching orders to look, taste and be alive.

Contact the writer:

444-1069, nichole.aksamit@owh.com

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