Leslie Brenner Declares Nonna 'As Wonderful as Ever'

This week LesBren revisits an oldie-but-a-goodie, filing a four-star review on Julian Barsotti's Italian food palace Nonna. After eight years of slinging pasta to Park Cities crowds, Brenner declares the modern Italian restaurant "as wonderful as ever," and Barsotti keeps things fresh by constantly changing up the menu.

Unsurprisingly, she's particularly enthusiastic about the handmade pastas:

Nonna's pastas, all handmade in-house, are splendid, as in bucatini -- hollow tubes as long as spaghetti and barely thicker -- glossed lightly with a buttery white-wine sauce. Barsotti set a tangle of them in a dish of Manila clams casino, the sweet little clams in their shells mingled with cipollini onions and bits of speck, finishing it with toasted bread crumbs and chopped parsley. Just as impressive were light and tender little gnocchetti, not much bigger than chickpeas, bathed in a luscious sauce of braised quail and hedgehog mushrooms.

Spot prawns appeared again another night tucked into tortelli neri -- mini-ravioli dyed black with squid ink and sauced lightly in brodetto over fennel cream. Butter, sage and acorn-fed prosciutto dressed tender tortellini filled with house-made ricotta.

In other reviews this week, Scott Reitz found tasty vegetarian Indian food at Saravana Bhazan in Irving, the Fort Worth Weekly checked out the new Market + Table concept(formerly Tillman's Roadhouse), and The Star-Telegram reviewed a steakhouse in Keller and Fort Worth's Library Cafe.