Living la dolce vita: M'tucci's Twenty-Five takes diners to Trentino-Alto Adige with final pairing dinner of the year

Be whisked away to northern Italy through food and drink during M’tucci’s Twenty-Five’s final pairing dinner of the year.

The dining experience will be held on Thursday, Dec. 12, at the restaurant located at 4939 Pan American Freeway NE. The seven-course dinner will feature food, wine and cocktails inspired by the northern Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige, which borders Switzerland and Austria.

The region is known for its sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio wines and is popular for its three indigenous red grape varieties: schiava, teroldego and lagrein, according to a M’tucci’s news release.

Shawn Cronin, M’tucci’s partner and company chef, worked with M’tucci’s Twenty-Five’s team to come up with the paring dinner menu. The team had to get creative for this particular dinner due to the season.

“It’s always hardest in the wintertime, because you have a lot of heavy dishes, a lot of braises,” he explained. “During the fall, there’s the harvest and there’s all the fruits and veggies and everything. So any chef can just sit there and go, ‘I have this bounty of beautiful things I can use,’ whereas in December, it’s like, ‘OK, what can we do?’ It’s not really seasonal, but it’s going to make sense.”

The team decided on focusing on a Trentino-Alto Adige-inspired dinner.

“It’s kind of in this weird little area where, throughout war it was part of Italy, and then not part of Italy, and then part of Italy,” Cronin explained. “Italy ended up winning the sweepstakes and kept it forever, at least to this point. It’s got a lot of really cool German influence, a lot of Austrian influence, there’s some Swiss influence. It’s on the base of the Swiss Alps. And the nice thing about that is, because of that, there’s a lot of hearty dishes.”

There are plenty of “stick to your bones” kind of dishes and that is why the specific region was chosen for the pairing dinner, Cronin said.

The dinner begins with Il Saluto, which features elk, smoked beets, pickled onion and citrus paired with a Hugo Spritz made with St. Germain, prosecco and mint foam.

“The greeting is going to be grilled elk that is this two bite skewer that we’ll do over open charcoal on this Italian rotisserie right outside the restaurant,” Cronin said. “There’s some cool little secrets and tricks that we’ll have as people are coming up, and we’ll try to throw a little theater into it.”

The evening continues with Salumi, made up of wild boar and cherry sausage, braised borlotti beans and spätzle. The course is complemented with a Negroni cocktail. It is followed by the Polpette L’Anatra featuring Canederli en Brodo, M’tucci’s sourdough dumplings, duck meatballs and wild mushroom brodo paired with the 2021 Tramin pinot nero. The wine features notes of forest fruits, plums, raspberries and cherries that lends to a fresh acidity on the palate with fine-grained tannins and a hint of floral notes, according to the news release.

The Fileto Di Manzo, consists of Guanciale-wrapped beef tenderloin, Mandy’s Farm polenta and a roasted plum cream sauce. It is paired with the 2023 Elena Walch lagrein wine, which is a “well-balanced, medium bodied red, which marries fine, taut tannins and plum skin acidity with a core of dark (raspberry and boysenberry) fruit,” according to Wine Spectator. Mandy’s Farm is a local nonprofit organization that assists individuals with developmental disabilities in achieving their goals for living, learning, and working in the community. This year, M’tucci’s is donating 5% of its gift card sales from Black Friday through the end of the year to Mandy’s Farm.

“We get polenta from our friends at Mandy’s Farm,” Cronin said. “They literally grow certain things for us. And last year, one of the best things we served, in my opinion, at any dinner was their polenta. We flew the seeds in from Italy, and they planted it, grew all the corn, dried the corn off, and then we take our molino, like you would use to make tortillas basically, and we grind it, toast it and make fresh polenta right there. It makes you realize that you’ve never had polenta until you’ve actually had this kind of stuff.”

The meal continues with the Abbacchio course consisting of a red wine marinated roasted leg of lamb and pancetta braised barley paired with the 2022 M’tucci’s teroldego wine. Strudel di Mele, made up of apple confit, walnut and ricotta diplomate crème and brown butter arlette, ends the dinner.

The event is meant to be an unpretentious and casual experience with the best food and service.

“We want it to be fun,” Cronin said. “At the end of the day, we’re gonna go out, we’re gonna joke with people, we’re gonna laugh and try to get people to laugh with us. We can have a good time and good food, but without it being a stuffy, pretentious kind of environment.”