Solo Italiano

Thrilled to receive high praise from an esteemed critic! ♥️ 🇮🇹 ✌️

Just a few of the comforting dishes getting us through Second Winter here in Portland 😮‍💨 🌧️

🦀 FRITTO MISTO
Genovese battered soft shell crab, red shrimp and spring carrots

🎣 PESCATRICE ALLA SPEZZINA
Legume soup from La Spezia served with local monkfish and Piennolo cherry tomatoes

🐑 COSTINE D’AGNELLO
Pan seared rack of lamb, roasted turnips, mustard greens, lamb sauce

TO ITALY WITH SOLO

This year we are excited to offer three different food and wine tours with Solo’s co-owners, head chef Paolo Laboa and Wine Guy Jesse Bania. Our first offering this June will be a tour of Paolo’s home region, Liguria, and then a stop to the wild island of Sardegna. In late fall, our classic trips will run—Liguria & Piemonte and then Liguria & Umbria. Details are all on our website (link in bio)!

While we could go on and on about the enriching experiences we’ve had on these trips, we’d rather let one of our guests share about their time in Italy with us last year. Scroll ➡️ to hear from Ellen, who admitted “it’s impossible to capture the magic of our trip in words.”

Inquiries about the trip can be sent through the website, or email Jesse at [email protected].

https://www.soloitalianorestaurant.com/trips

Buon Anno, Solo Italiano community! 🎉

This year we have decided to offer our entire full time staff health insurance for the first time. We believe that such coverage is a broad benefit to their well-being as well as to the business’ success! While margins are notoriously slim in this industry, size can help. But we are a small business at the end of the day, and size shouldn’t be a predetermining factor in our ability to offer such coverage in the first place.

We also believe that it doesn’t easily fit into a broad “pricing increase” approach. We began offering coverage to our salaried employees three years ago. Since then, those costs have increased 58% (this year it was 25% alone). By carving this out onto a surcharge on each check, it allows us to track and reconcile the charges against the unique cost they are covering. It even allows us to reimburse our employees on the employee responsibility portion of their premium in the event we over-collect!

As such, beginning today, we are increasing our service surcharge (to be renamed from “Coperto” to “Service and Wellness Charge) to 3.75%. 2% of this will be allocated to the health insurance program for our company, while the other 1.75% will remain for bread service. For full disclosure, the bread service portion is seeing a DECREASE from 2% last year after a full year’s assessment on the costs of bread service. Our bread service includes fresh-baked sourdough delivered from and focaccia made in-house at the restaurant, grissini for the bar and gluten-free grissini from Italy, & extra virgin olive oil for all of the above.

We appreciate your continued support and understanding and wish all of you a happy and healthy (and delicious) new year!