Karina’s

Karina’s
1520 E. Passyunk Ave.
215-218-0460
Cash only
BYOB
Open weekdays for lunch and dinner;
weekends for brunch and dinner

A number of talented Philadelphia chefs never attended professional cooking school. Pedro Beltrano is one of them.

In 1986, Beltrano left his native Ecuador for New York City, where an Italian family hired him to work in several of their restaurants. He started out washing dishes and watching the matriarch of the family prepare homemade pasta and authentic Italian cucina. This woman taught Beltrano the ways of the Italian kitchen, and he soon became a chef.

Beltrano has been cooking in Philadelphia for quite some time. He worked at Il Portico and Portofino, and was in the kitchen at La Viola on opening day two-and-a-half years ago. I reviewed La Viola and found it to be a delightful, three-toque BYOB with moderate prices. Now, fortunately, South Philly has him.

Two months ago, Beltrano opened Karina’s on East Passyunk Avenue, between Tasker and Dickinson streets. If you are keeping a running tally of three-toque BYOB restaurants, add Karina’s to your list.

The restaurant is cozy with yellow and white tiled walls and rich burgundy pull-back drapes. Tables are covered with white linen and matching napkins. A young man greeted us on our recent visit and we settled in.

The menu contained a few surprises. Although Karina’s is called a ristorante Italiano, the menu lists a number of Spanish and South American dishes. My husband Edward and I decided to "go Chinese" — choose some from column A and some from column B.

Our waiter, who was also from Ecuador, recited the specials in a soft Spanish-accented voice, and we asked for each price. He opened our wine, a rich C�te du Rhone that warmed us on a rainy evening, and brought us a small dish of olive oil with balsamic vinegar and a hot-from-the-oven loaf of Italian bread.

The minute I looked into my big bowl of squeaky-clean Prince Edward Island mussels ($6), I noticed Beltrano’s use of South American ingredients. Instead of adding chopped parsley to the dish, he used heady fresh leaves of cilantro, which added flavor to the reduced white wine and garlic sauce. Cilantro is used in South American and Mexican cooking and is known as the parsley of South America. There were about two dozen beauties in my bowl, and I easily polished them off. I then savored the broth with a spoon, just like soup.

Edward’s antipasto — or apertivo in Spanish — was a big, delicious surprise. "Bolitas de mozzarella" ($7) was described as rolled mozzarella and prosciutto with anchovies in a porcini sauce. We assumed it was a cold first course. Beltrano took fresh mozzarella and mixed it with prosciutto and anchovies. He fashioned the ingredients into balls, which looked like meatballs, and made a reduction sauce with hearty fresh porcini mushrooms, then heated the sauce and poured it on top of the bolitas. The combination of flavors was outrageously delicious, the anchovies adding just a slight salty taste.

"Insalata della chef" ($6) consisted of a good-sized mound of fresh baby arugula topped with sliced fresh artichokes — emphasis on fresh — and triangles of shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano. Beltrano topped the salad with a lemon vinaigrette. Although our waiter constantly asked if we required fresh ground pepper, every dish we savored at Karina’s needed no added seasoning.

Edward looked to South America for his salad and selected "ensalada de aguacate" ($5), a salad of torn fresh romaine leaves, ripe tomatoes and a perfectly ripe sliced avocado tossed in a light vinaigrette. Like my salad, this one was simply prepared using top ingredients.

For my entr�e, I had to have Beltrano’s paella ($25), the great dish of Valencia. Paella is enjoyed all over Spain and the ingredients vary. The one true constant is rice cooked with saffron.

I must tell you my dinner was big enough for two, although Beltrano prepares paella for two for $30. Go figure. Anyway, I received a large oval platter of perfectly cooked saffron rice topped with steamed mussels, clams, scallops, large shrimp, two jumbo — and I mean jumbo — prawns and half of a chicken lobster, whose tail was loaded with meat. It was a masterpiece on the plate.

Edward’s "churasco Argentino" ($18) was a hefty, juicy New York strip steak, grilled rare as ordered and topped with tangy chimichurri sauce — made with olive oil, vinegar, chopped parsley or cilantro, oregano, onion, garlic, salt and cayenne pepper. Accompaniments included perfectly steamed asparagus and South American roasted potatoes made with an adobo-like paste of olive oil, chilies and vinegar. They were as scrumptious as the steak and asparagus.

When we heard homemade tartuffo ($5) was among the dolci, I had to try it. Beltrano fashioned a ball of rich vanilla ice cream and rolled it in chopped bittersweet chocolate. He added squiggles of raspberry and caramel to the dish.

As we savored our sweet, the chef came into the dining room. He greeted a couple who knew him from La Viola and then came over to speak with us. We chatted and congratulated him on Karina’s, which is named for his 16-year-old daughter.

Book a table now and look forward to a delicious tour of Italy, Spain and South America right here in South Philly. And bring your best bottle of wine.

Three tips of the toque to Karina’s.