Aliseo Osterio Del Borgo

Aliseo Osterio Del Borgo
667 Vanderbilt Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238
718 783 3400
Food 6
Ambiance 6
Service 4
Overall 17
Good for romantic simple Italian cuisine for couple or very small group
So having lived in the Prospect Heights area a few years ago, I had always passed by this restaurant with intrigue. Last night, Saturday, finding too many of the funky new Prospect Heights establishements packed and not allowing reservations, I ventured forth in the cold night for some proper Italian comfort food. When you enter Aliseo,you feel you are coming home. Home to a cozy small dining room  that your Uncle from  Italy happens to open daily to strangers. Faded rose gold gilded wallpaper. Flickering candles. Soft sheltered lighbulbs. Murmurs of soft jazz background music. This is the kind of place that becomes your Sunday night dinner go to. The kind of place where you spend a 3 hour meal with friends and the owner ends up sharing a bottle of wine with you. In other words my kind of place. Now to have this kind of atmosphere , you must be intimate and truly small. The restaurant has maybe 8 tables total, all cheek to cheek. The food menu is as small as the restaurant, with many mains doing double duty as appetizers. Prices are reasonable, most appetizers in the 9-10 dollar range and mains in the mid teens to early twenties.Where Aliseo is not small is its fairly comprehensive Italian wine list, with an excellent representation of wines from most of the important wine regions.
After consultation with the owner, we settled for a $38 Montepulciano from Marche. A well balanced fruit forward wine which complemented our meal  and mood fantastically.
We opted to start our meal with the $9 squid fennel salad. The fennel was refreshing and mildly sweet. The squid was not ultrafresh and a bit too salty. Overall, an adequate salad. For mains, I opted for the $21 braised short rib with grilled polenta and my husband for the $25 special branzino and monkfish. We also ordered an extra $8.50 side of mixed sauteed vegetables. My short rib came , a tender mildy seasoned piece of meat with a pan grilled portion of creamy polenta. The plate also had some lovely charred endive. The beef could have been better caramelized and the polenta more grilled, but the overall flavor was simple home cooking. It reminded me of some of the inexpensive Italian places in Marche I have visited . My husband's fish, also not ultrafresh ,was served in a deliciously  fragrant saffron broth. Unfortunately the heady perfume of the broth did not have a chance to permeate the fish. In addition, his fish was not served with anything, vegetables or starch, which I thought was odd for a 25 dollar special. We moved onward to desserts. I ordered the chocalate tart and my husband the ricotta and coffee cake dessert. Both $8.50. My tart arrived , pieshell dangerously close to burnt, dancing on a semisweet orange sauce. The tart was a light not too sweet creamy chocalate. If the pieshell was less burnt it would have a been a perfect light dessert ending. My husband's ricotta and coffe cake turned out to be flavored ricotta served in a pie shell. Our waiter forgot to let us know they were out of coffee cake. Unfortunately, the flavored ricotta tasted odd with the pieshell and was really not a welcome dessert ending.
Our waiter was not very present most of our meal.
Overall, although there were some misses in the food and service, I would venture forth here again and focus on pastas and meats.
The Quest continues..............