An unexpected city for some of the Bay Area’s best Italian food

In the first Dumpling Report, I shared that a reason behind starting this dumpling column was that dumplings are universal — not just Chinese and not just Asian. Many readers soon responded that Italian cuisine has tons of dumplings, from gnocchi to ravioli, and I’ve been waiting for the right time to write about them. 

Through a chance encounter, I met Annamaria Di Giorgio, the outgoing director of the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, an arm of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Before San Francisco, her post since 2019, Di Giorgio did stints in Berlin and Rome. She was getting ready to move to her next station — Barcelona — when I caught her for an Italian dumpling meal of her choosing.

She wanted ravioli. Why not gnocchi?

“The definition of Italian dumplings is stuffed egg pasta,” explained Di Giorgio. 

Di Giorgio is a member of the Accademia Italiana Della Cucina, an authority on Italian cuisine. It recommends Italian restaurants worldwide that serve authentic Italian food, and Donato Enoteca is in line to be reviewed for its coveted list. The Redwood City restaurant has hosted the academy’s members multiple times, and received its distinguished Silver Plate for outstanding food and hospitality, which is prominently displayed in the restaurant’s wine case. This is where Di Giorgio chose to go for our Italian dumplings.

Wait. Redwood City? Why not a restaurant in North Beach, the Italian heart of San Francisco, and where the cultural institute is located?

“North Beach restaurants are more Italo American or touristic,” Di Giorgio said. While some places are certainly still good, many aren’t considered Italian Italian. So off to Donato Enoteca in downtown Redwood City we went. 

Open since 2009, Donato Enoteca sits on a corner with a commanding black-and-white sign simply stating, “DONATO.” Covered outdoor seating flanks the main entrance, with lush planter boxes adding a rustic touch to this otherwise clean-but-sterile pocket of Silicon Valley.

Donato Enoteca’s chef-owner, Donato Scotti, arrived in the U.S. in 1989 at age 21, already having worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy. His food-loving family grew their own vegetables and raised chickens and rabbits in a small, rural town outside of Bergamo, just northeast of Milan. He landed in New York and eventually made his way to the Peninsula via Italian restaurants in Los Angeles and Fresno. Scotti’s big career shift came with the opening of La Strada in Palo Alto in 2004, where he was executive chef and responsible for the restaurant concept and menu. 

Since then, his Donato Restaurant Group has opened and closed various dining venues around the Bay Area. Currently, it operates Donato Enoteca, as well as CRU, a wine bar and cafe also in Redwood City, and Donato & Co. in Berkeley, which is co-owned by Scotti’s longtime culinary partner and friend, chef Gianluca Guglielmi. Berkeley is where Gugliemi dries pasta and cures meats like salumi, which are also available alongside other pantry items for retail purchase. Other pastas on Scotti’s menus, including the dough for the dumplings, are made fresh in each restaurant’s kitchen daily. Despite his Michelin cred and preference for imported ingredients, Scotti still aims to be affordable, with house-made pasta dishes running just north of $20.

After we parked in a lot across the street (just $1/hour!), Scotti’s hospitable staff seated us outside, under a covering that allowed us to linger comfortably in the heat. We started with a glass of sparkling rosé and nibbled on rosemary-parmesan breadsticks, followed by gamberi al forno (succulent wood-fired whole shrimp with charred sweet corn), creamy burrata pugliese with house-made buckwheat crostones (curse the American food writers who say burrata is over!), and an impressive-looking insalata di fave (pork guanciale and arugula nested in a crispy buckwheat bread bowl). That was just the beginning.

Then came all the dumplings. Oblong ravioli bergamaschi “scarpinocc,” golden-colored from egg yolks and pinched and fluted on both ends, with a finger depression in the middle, arrived sautéed in a traditional brown butter-sage sauce, topped with crispy slices of sunchokes “just for fun,” Scotti said of the nontraditional garnish. A typical Bergamo ravioli filled with wild greens and Taleggio cheese (another Bergamo specialty), the scarpinocc’s nutty, salty cheese mixed with a hefty amount of wilted greens, and that middle depression capturing plenty of viscous brown butter sauce made for a filling vegetarian comfort plate.

Scotti then brought out his restaurant’s signature agnolotti del plin (plin translating to pinch), which he served two ways. “Religiously prepared every morning,” he wrote of the dumplings on Instagram, the agnolotti looked like tiny purses of thin, fresh egg pasta filled with a trio of ground pork, pork sausage and veal (traditionally it’s pork, rabbit and veal, Scotti told us), making for a small but richly complex bite.

The first platter was a more traditional recipe, using “roasting juices of the filling to make an almost jus sauce,” he said of the rich, brown sauce coating each tiny piece. The second presentation is a constant on the menu, with the pasta purses in a tart and sweet tomato and onion sauce — something a bit more familiar to American diners. 

Speaking of onions, “there is a universal fight among Italians,” said Di Giorgio of an old culinary tension — whether onions belong in pasta or not. Some chefs and home cooks abhor mixing garlic and onions in the same dish, while others love the dimension of flavor and texture onions add. At Donato Enoteca, onions are clearly welcome.

The final Italian dumpling dish was “a surprise for Annamaria,” Scotti said with a mischievous look. He wouldn’t reveal what the dish was until she guessed. A rectangular platter of round tortellini sat atop a cloud of white sauce, garnished with slivers of red onion (see?) and large circles of crispy parmesan frico. A bite into the first dumpling revealed a bright, chunky tomato sauce, flecked with black and red chile peppers, and savory bits of guanciale. After some thoughtful chewing and input from her husband, Mario Vecchione, who accompanied us, Di Giorgio finally guessed: amatriciana sauce, a take on the classic bucatini all’amatriciana. 

Scotti’s surprise dish was also presented as inverted dumpling — instead of cheese on the inside and tomato sauce on the outside, Scotti whipped pecorino cheese and water to make a sauce on the outside, then stuffed the pasta with amatriciana tomato sauce. Curious diners will be happy to know that Scotti does offer this particular inverted pasta dish from time to time as a special. In the vein of Italian hospitality, of course, Scotti offered more food, but we couldn’t eat another bite, being stuffed just like the dumplings we ate.

Scotti had a thought about why San Francisco’s North Beach may no longer hold the monopoly on the Bay Area’s best Italian food.

“Culture has shifted in a big way,” he said, referring to Italians in America now versus the immigrants who arrived in the late 19th century, mostly from an impoverished Southern Italy. They brought their food and modified it to American palates, creating now-iconic Italian American dishes, like spaghetti and meatballs. “Now these things have disappeared, but we have scarpinocc. We don’t serve spaghetti and meatballs, but we have something that might remind you of it.”

Demand for high-quality Italian food has also increased: “There’s been a gradual change in guard, from more homey Italian restaurants to more professional ones. Even a lot of American guys go to Italy for a year, come back and open a restaurant and have great food. They focus on region.” 

Scotti continues to toe a successful line between keeping Italian tradition and presenting food in his own novel way, whether by inverting ingredients on a plate or mixing imported Italian ingredients with local produce uncommon in Italy. He never forgets the wine, either, hosting annual, usually sold-out wine dinners. As demonstrated by his resume of businesses, Scotti is also as much entrepreneur as he is chef. So of course there is something new on the horizon.

“We’re working on something. Keep your seatbelts on,” said Scotti of his next food venture, which he hopes to open in 2024. He didn’t share details yet of the concept or location, but he did reveal one thing: “It’s not your next pizza place.” 

Donato Enoteca, 1041 Middlefield Road, Redwood City. Open Tuesday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. and  4 -9 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m., and Sunday, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m.