Toscana Café | Fine Italian Dining in Capitol Hill, Washington, DC

Over in the shadow of Union Station, chef Daniele Catalani and his team at Toscana Café (601 Second St. NE, 202-525-2693) bake ciabatta every morning, using a recipe that mixes in a healthy amount of flavor-enhancing biga into the dough. The golden blocks are pulled from the deck oven hot, fresh, and ready for the 14 sandwiches on Catalani’s menu.

Catalani’s crusty loaves are so flavorful they practically steal the show from the top-billed ingredients, particularly the Italiano’s spicy fennel pork sausage, which is a fine link, save for the casings that were (in my case) crisped into a rubbery mass better suited for teething infants. Once, the ciabatta was even MIA on my Napolitano meatball sandwich, replaced with an inferior sub roll. It didn’t distract a lick from those rich, melt-in-your mouth meatballs, braised in Catalani’s tomato sauce and shot through with fresh parsley, oregano, and roasted garlic puree. It’s the current gold standard for meatball sandwiches.

Read more at the Hill Rag.

Even if you haven’t been by in a while, the aroma greeting you at Toscana Cafe is instantly familiar. Mmm, focaccia!

Baked that morning, its rosemary-yeasty scent still strong by evening, the bread is one of many from-scratch foods that have made Daniele Catalani’s Italian takeout a go-to in the near-Northeast neighborhood.

Catalani opened the eatery a year ago in a converted townhouse just east of Union Station. His setup is unconventional: You enter via the kitchen, place your order with whoever is standing by (often, it’s a cook making eye contact), then watch the meal come together.

About a dozen seats fill the second floor, but most orders get rushed out the door (in well-insulated plastic carryalls). Which is just how Catalani planned it: “At lunchtime the place is more like a deli. I wanted to drive that concept through to dinner. I wanted people who don’t have time to sit down to have an option.”

Read the entire review at the Washington Post

Thanks to the Toscana Café, diners may now savor the robust cooking of Tuscany on Capitol Hill. Situated at the corner of Second and F streets NE, the appealing newcomer debuted in early August and is quickly gaining a loyal clientele.

Daniele Catalini, who once wielded his whisk at the late Galileo, Toscana settled into the space vacated by Banducci, across the street from Ebenenzer’s Coffeehouse. Blue umbrellas mark the café’s outdoor patio, where picnic tables seat about three dozen. Above, the red-white-and-green Italian flag flaps in the breeze alongside Old Glory.

Open for dinner Monday through Saturday, for now, Toscana’s lunch is carryout only, which is fine with harried workers from the nearby Supreme Court, Senate office buildings and the SEC. Later on, Catalani might add sit-down lunch and weekend service.

“We are so happy to come to your neighborhood,” said Catalani, who lives in Adams Morgan with his wife Vicki and 3-month old daughter Anna Bella. “You have been most welcoming, and we are glad to be able to come here and provide a service.”

Read the entire review at the Hill Rag (PDF).

Capitol Hill residents traditionally have not been spoiled with good neighborhood restaurants, but things are looking up.

Not only have offerings improved dramatically on H Street Northeast and Eighth Street Southeast, but tucked away in a corner row house not far from Union Station is also a new Italian restaurant – Toscana Cafe – that blows any competition, particularly within its own moderately priced category, out of the water (and gives its more upscale counterparts a run for their money).

Young chef and owner Daniele Catalani, a former Roberto Donna protege and originally from the medieval Tuscan town of Pistoia near Florence, has succeeded in creating a menu that is so compelling that within the first month of opening his restaurant, he needs to expand to accommodate Italophiles and foodies from near and far.

Read the entire review at the Washington Times

Tom Sietsema wrote about Toscana Cafe for a September 2009 First Bite column.

A fresh place to eat in the shadow of Union Station? No sooner does a reader share the word (“I’ve lunched there three days in a row!”) than a friend and I hop in a cab and join the line snaking outside the sunny yellow, two-story Toscana Cafe on a recent workday.

A gelato cart parked near some tables on the patio is a good omen. Scanning the menu on the wall inside, we are also pleased to see “homemade” lasagna and pizza offered by the slice. We order both, throw in a sandwich and a plastic cup of tiramisu, pay for the spread at a cash register and head outside to soak up some afternoon rays and verify my tipster’s rave.

Read the entire review at the Washington Post