From Sicily to Robbinsdale: Finding Italian Soul at Risata Cucina

 I love finding a neighborhood restaurant that checks all the right boxes. 

• Family friendly
• Comfortable ambiance
• Good food
• Reasonable prices

Risata Cucina in Robbinsdale (northwest Minneapolis suburb) fits that description. 

My wife and I took our son and his family there for a Saturday night dinner. There were six of us - 2 grandparents, 2 parents, 2 teenagers. With a group that size, we were able to try a variety of items on the menu. 

We started with appetizers - fried calamari and arancini. We were served a generous portion of the calamari; everyone could get some. An order of arancini is four; our server brought us an extra half order so everyone could get one. I liked the calamari, but my favorite was the arancini. They were mushroom arancini and the earthy mushroom flavor was great. 

Everyone ordered from the pasta menu for our main dishes. My son and his daughter had casarecce scampi. The pasta was short, twisted noodles with smoked bay scallops, lemon butter and chives. 

Our daughter-in-law had carrot agnolotti. The pasta was stuffed with a carrot filling, like a ravioli. The sauce was brown butter, pistachio, dill, and fennel pollen.

Our grandson had potato gnocchi with lemon cream, crispy prosciutto, and Parmesan cheese. (My son and I once took a class in making gnocchi. He still makes it for his family, but I haven't made it much since.) 

My wife had radiatore alla Norma. The pasta was served with eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, basil, and burrata cheese. Last September, she and I spent a week in Sicily where we had pasta alla Norma. This dish at Risata Cucina compared very favorably. 

I was torn between ordering the radiatore like my wife, or the agnolotti. But I also wanted to try something different. So I ended up ordering a dish called bucatini pizzaiola, which our server described as a pepperoni pizza on pasta. It was good. Besides the pasta, tomatoes, and pepperoni, it came with a dollop of lemon ricotta which made it very creamy. I liked it. But I liked the radiatore alla Norma better. Lucky for me, my wife didn't eat it all, so we brought some home and I'll get it for lunch someday. 

For dessert, we got an order of tiramisu and a serving of cannoli. Tiramisu isn't my favorite. I had a spoonful, but was happy to let the others finish it. I did really like the cannoli. The crisp cannoli shells were stuffed with ricotta mixed with orange zest, and it was topped with caramel and chopped candied hazelnuts. 

I mentioned that my wife and I were in Sicily last September. Many of the items on the menu at Risata have Sicilian roots. The casarecce is considered a typical Sicilian pasta, and pasta alla Norma is a traditional dish there. When we were in Palermo, we went to a monastery where they make what's regarded to be the best cannoli in the city. It's made with a sheep's milk ricotta and pistachios, and they are huge in size. I also had arancini at a street market in Palermo. 

I won't go so far as to say that the food at Risata is as good as anything we had in Sicily. But it was very good, and certainly more accessible that going all the way to Sicily. 

PS: I apologize for only having one photo from our dinner, the cannoli at the top of this post. We were having so much fun having a family dinner that I didn't think to take photos until dessert.