ONE OF TWO ITALIAN RESTAURANTS

Since I'm writing for Giornale Italo Americano, I thought I'd hit two Italian restaurants that are not in the Italian North End district to see if you have to go to Boston's "Little Italy" for the best. The first of the two was in the Beacon Hill area just down the street from the Charles Street Inn. It's called Bin26 and appears to focus on being a wine bar.

It is actually one of three restaurants owned by Azita Bina and her brother Babak Bina. One other is an upscale Italian restaurant called BiNa Osteria and the other a Persian restaurant called Lala Rokh. She is also the Executive Chef of all three.

I wanted to do a tasting of various items on the menu. First course choices were: Baked Eggplant Parmigiano (would have been a great tasting entree); Zucchini Carpaccio (thin slices of zucchini with olive oil, lemon and pine nuts that totally enhanced the vegetable); Marinated Olives (they marinate the olives using garlic and chili flakes ); and Speck del Tirolo. I wanted to try Speck, a smoked version of Proscuitto di Parma. Seemed a bit less salty than the proscuitto.

Appetizers: Roasted Golden and Red Beet Salad with Endive and a house-made balsamic vinaigrette. The bowl of the soup of the day was Cannellini Bean Soup with roasted tomatoes and shrimp atop (loved the soup).

Pasta was next. CocaTagliatelle with Porcini Mushrooms ragout scented with Nepitella, a minty herb from the Tuscany region of Italy that resembles oregano. The pasta has a bit of cocoa in it for the color rather than the flavor. It didn't taste like a chocolate pasta. Those porcini mushrooms were sooooo good.

Noticing that I basically had a meatless meal, I went for a seafood entree of a whole fresh roasted Mediterranean Branzino, with lemon, thyme and asparagus.

Had to save just a bit of room for one of the signature desserts, ThreeRamiso. It's a trio of tiramisu desserts. One is the tiramisu cake itself and the others are a tiramisu flavored eggnog and a scoop of tiramisu gelato. The cake itself is not very sweet compared to the other two parts. I was told that some people pour the drink over the cake.

I'm stuffed and so are Esther and Eunice who seemed to be more interested in the wines.