We’ve been to il Chianti before, being that it is only about a mile from our house.  Dinner has always been interesting, but generally items are hit or miss.  Not often you can get an uni pizza.  But it is a cool place, great hidden tables, counter seating, outdoor seating, lots of options.  Even a nice wine list with some good Italian options.

So it was just happenstance that we were driving out this past sunday looking for a quick meal not so out of the way, and we saw the open sign.  What the heck.  Our timing was good, they just started offering brunch in the last month. 

You have three options ranging from $12-$18.  The cheapest includes a salad, 3 appetizers, soup, rice or bread, beverage, dessert, and a pasta dish.  The next highest has a meat instead of pasta, and for $18 you get the meat and pasta.

Now, you can’t be that picky cause the menu is fixed.  It changes each week.  Here was ours:

Beverages included about 9 options. We went with a Kirin draft and a sparkling wine (house.)

1) Spring greens and veggies with a homemade ginger dressing that had a touch of anchovy (?) flavoring
2) An appetizer plate containing 4 items: 
    -pure-tasting consomme containing a few pieces of lardon
    -small salad of salmon sashimi chunks, tomato, shiso (as a play on basil)
    -a few slices of smoked salmon twirled on some sweet onion and capers
    -hotate (scallop) sashimi with tobiko and a minced onion salsa
3)Pasta was served side by side with the meat:
    -Pasta was spaghetti with roasted japanese eggplant and ground chicken in a rustic marinara with garlic
    -Meat was a pork tenderloin and not-too-sweet demi-glaze.  It was served on mound of mashed potatoes. The potatoes were the only item we did not care for.  No problem, the serving of rice (perfectly glistening individual kernals) was more than plenty.
4) There were three dessert options: Chocolate mousse, Red bean cheesecake, panna cotta.  We split the panna cotta and cheesecake.  Both were small slices that in typical asian style were not too sweet and a great light ending to an incredibly surprisingly tasty brunch.

This is a great value.  We sat at the counter and could see a lot of the action in the kitchen.  What a great thing to do on a lazy sunday afternoon. 

BTW, you can order of the rest of the menu as well.  We saw a bowl of fire go by us, and we were told it was an octopus flambe of some sort.  Would love to have tried that…

Il Chianti

www.il–chianti.com

24503 Narbonne Ave
Lomita, CA 90717
(310) 325-5000