Gioia De is a cucina sociale in the Vieux-Port, and the phrase does a lot of work: this is the Italy everyone already knows — fresh pasta, wine opened without much deliberation, tables nobody is in a hurry to leave — served with rather more intention than that easy familiarity suggests. Warm Italian elegance is the house's own description of itself, and the balance holds in both directions: nothing here is stiff, but nothing is careless either. The kitchen works Italian tradition through simplicity and generosity, with fresh ingredients, local producers, and preparations made in house, and every plate is conceived to be passed around rather than guarded.
Dinner opens in the register of snacks and things to pick at — warm marinated olives with orange zest and fresh herbs ($9), focaccia with whipped butter ($6), whipped ricotta with honey and truffle paste ($15), and fried mozzarella sticks with prosciutto marmalade and spiced marinara ($16). Then come the raw and the cured, the most quietly ambitious part of the carte: oysters with a negroni mignonette (six for $23, a dozen for $42), a prawn cocktail with cherry-tomato sauce and giardiniera aïoli ($27), knife-cut beef tartare with horseradish, confit egg yolk, pecorino and taralli ($26), hamachi crudo with green apple, crème fraîche, fried capers and bottarga ($27), bresaola della Valtellina with red-wine-marinated cherries and pistachios ($25), and a Québec prosciutto from Les Cochons Tout Ronds with crostoli and apricot marmalade ($24). Burrata from Puglia gets a section of its own, in three moods — classic with heirloom tomatoes and basil, salty with Cetara anchovies and black olive tapenade, or sweet with roasted figs ($25 to $26). Pasta runs to campanelle with fresh peas, morels, ricotta and mint ($31), paccheri with sausage, fennel and chilli ($27), mafaldine under a white wild boar ragù ($29), and vesuvio in a rosé sauce with Calabrian chilli and mascarpone ($26); pizzas hold at $22 to $23, from 'nduja with roasted peppers and Pollino oregano to crisp pepperoni with hot honey, mortadella with stracciatella and pistachio, or a vegetarian of courgette flower, marinated courgette, ricotta and preserved lemon. The larger specialities — branzino with burnt-citrus vinaigrette, fennel and courgette purée ($41), an 8oz bavette with chimichurri and fifteen-hour potatoes ($38), tiger prawns in piccata sauce with grilled focaccia ($31), and a 15oz New York strip at market price — are the plates for a longer evening.
The wine list is chosen plate by plate rather than assembled for show, built to accompany the food, and the bar turns out signature cocktails to sip either perched there or brought to the table.
Lunch is the same kitchen at a gentler pitch. A table d'hôte at $31 offers a first service of bitter Castelfranco-and-radicchio salad with stracciatella and hazelnuts, mozzarella sticks, or half portions of the hamachi and the tartare, followed by the day's white or red pizza or the day's pasta — with branzino or bavette available as supplements — and finished with dessert and an espresso. There's an à la carte alongside it at friendlier prices, including a sandwich of the day at $18, and between half past two and five the snack list keeps going for anyone arriving in the long afternoon. Unhurried, generous, and quietly precise, Gioia De is the kind of Italian table that makes an evening in the Vieux-Port stretch out longer than planned.