Vinoteca di Monica - restaurant review

On the Sunday of our trip to Boston last month, my friend and I wandered around the North End doing some sightseeing. We also looked for a place to have breakfast/brunch, but we were sort of wanting just regular food. Well, it turned out that our sightseeing was in a neighborhood where there were 400 Italian restaurants per square inch. We weren't really feeling like having Italian food because 1) most of the restaurants were serving regular Italian dishes like pizza and pasta and other heavy lunch/dinner foods as opposed to lighter breakfast/brunch foods and 2) we'd just had Italian for dinner the night before.

We did more sightseeing, and eventually, we just got too hungry to wait for a "regular" restaurant, so we started seriously looking at the Italian restaurants that were in abundant supply. We saw this one little restaurant with open windows, and when we glanced at the menu, behold, there were regular brunch items at this little Italian restaurant!

So, we stopped and had brunch at Vinoteca di Monica. The restaurant was pretty empty at the time - I can't remember if we were the only diners, but if not, there was only one other table occupied. We chose a table right by the open windows which looked out onto the little street. It was a beautiful Boston day.





I decided to just have a really regular breakfast and opted for two eggs with roasted potatoes, rustic toast and bacon. I also decided to add a side of fruit for good measure.

When the dish was brought, I was pleasantly surprised at how generous the serving of bacon was. Usually, it's two thin little pieces of bacon, but not so in this case. Everything was yummy.





When my friend was perusing the menu, she was having a hard time deciding between two items, the French toast and the bruschetta (grilled rustic bread) with eggs, cheese and prosciutto. Our server was *very* Italian, accent and everything, which I rather liked, and when he came to take our order, she asked him which of the two he would recommend. His suggestion was to have the bruschetta, so she went with that. After he left, I told her that he was Italian, so of course he was going to talk her out of having FRENCH toast. ;)

When her dish arrived, it looked really good, and she seemed to enjoy it.





One thing we found curious and amusing is that my dish came with "rustic toast" and hers came with "rustic bread". We wondered what "rustic" was supposed to mean and what the deal was with the bread being rustic.

Well, a search of the net didn't turn up too many things, but I found this description on wisegeek.com that helps a bit. I also found this particular discussion on chowhound which was pretty interesting.


We had a nice little quiet brunch, and everything was pretty tasty. It was a nice respite after our morning of running around and sightseeing. The restaurant looked to be pretty small, so I can imagine that it could be very busy, but it's a place I'd definitely be interested in trying again.




Vinoteca di Monica
143 Richmond St.
Boston, MA 02109
(617) 227-0311