Mark on the Shore

Mark’s Score   8.5

I have passed this restaurant dozens of times over the years, not giving it a second thought. I had intended to go to lunch at Portside, but they were closed. Carmela’s is just across the bridge from Portside, and it does get good reviews on both Yelp and Trip Advisor, so I decide to give it a try.

Carmela’s was opened by Charlie and Carmela Bono in 2012, after running a successful restaurant in Wilmington, Delaware for over twenty years. Their son, Stefano, is now both the lead chef and manager. Carmela’s mission is to offer authentic Southern Italian family recipes handed down through generations of the Bono family. All the food is made from scratch with fresh ingredients and generous, Italian family-sized portions. 

Carmela’s is located in an unassuming block of a building that could easily pass for a warehouse or old gas station. I parked my car in front, and walked in the door. The décor on the inside was little better than the outside. The dining room was lit with harsh blue lighting. Food always looks better under soft yellow lighting. The walls were painted black and covered with hundreds of photographs, including several of Frank Sinatra. The space was small and the black walls made it feel all the smaller. It immediately put me in mind of a pool hall. 

But the dining room was crowded, and there were several tables of policemen and construction workers. Working on the theory that policemen always know the best places to eat, so in spite of the down at heal atmosphere, things were starting to look up. I sat down, the waitress handed me a fairly standard menu, pizzas, hoagies, salads, and the usual pasta dishes.  No item stood out, so I asked the waitress for a recommendation. She said that she could not choose because everything was “so good.” So, I ordered the fettuccini with meat and chianti sauce. I picked this dish because it was classically Italian and though it seems simple, many restaurants do not cook pasta properly. 

The waitress left and immediately came back with a basket of focaccia bread with a red dipping sauce. Focaccia is risky because it can easily get heavy and can become dry as the Sahara. It was lightly seasoned and cooked to perfection. I few moments later, she brought the fettuccini. The fettuccini was the very definition of al dente. The sauce was traditionally Southern Italian, which means robust, meaty, and richer than northern Italian sauces. It was also obvious that the fettuccini was taken out of the water early and the chef finished cooking it the traditional Italian way, in the sauce. 

At the end of the day, Carmela’s is not much to look at and you could easily dismiss it. But you would be making a mistake. This restaurant is authentically southern Italian.  I would rate their meat sauce as one of the better red sauces in the region. Though it is not much to look at, Carmela’s is well worth a visit. 

What else is there to do in Cambridge?

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