If you’re looking for an extra special dining experience, you’ll find it at Michael’s on Naples in Long Beach. Known for its spectacular pizza and pasta, the established Italian restaurant is bringing the farm to your table with its Farmer’s Market Dinners.
Available only on Wednesdays, Michael’s on Naples sources fresh, seasonal ingredients from the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market and transforms them into carefully curated three-course dinners. While the wine pairing curated by Massimo Aronne is listed as optional, we’d argue that it is an absolute necessity during the Farmer’s Market Dinners.
Upon arriving at Michael’s on Naples, we were led upstairs to the rooftop patio. The open-air dining area is the perfect place to sit on a beautiful summer evening in California. The Farmer’s Market Dinners are ideal for date night or catching up with a good friend. Plan to return next Wednesday? Michael’s ensures diners are never bored by creating a different menu with its farmers market finds each week.
Before your three-course meal starts, Chef Eric Samaniego prepares an amuse-bouche to set the tone of the meal. We were treated to melon grown at Weiser Farms in Tehachapi, wrapped in prosciutto di Parma. The small bite was accompanied by a bubbling Franciacorta rosé that played delicately with the sweet and salty treat.
Our first course was Chianti tuna, which is ironically not tuna at all. Based on an ancient Tuscan recipe, the dish gets its name because it resembles the likeness and consistency of tuna in oil. Wild boar shoulder is poached in olive oil and served with white beans and heirloom tomato salad, grown at Her Produce in Fresno. The boar was extremely tender and the salad was light and fresh; a glass of crisp Vermentino wine was its accompaniment.
Once you’ve had homemade pasta, nothing else compares. Our second course consisted of rolled homemade pasta that was stuffed with ricotta and grana cheese and plated with mild yet spicy Jimmy Nardello peppers from Her Produce. The pasta had a consistency that only homemade pasta does, and it looked as good as it tasted. Most traditional pasta dishes are quite heavy, but these lighter summer flavors offered a refreshing rendition. The dish paired well with a Frappato red wine. We enjoyed the wine so much, we purchased a bottle to take home!
The third course is something we think about often. In Italian, it’s called torta d’olio con pesche or “olive oil cake with peaches.” Butter cake gets a lot of hype, but olive oil cake could be poised to dethrone it. Our cake was fluffy with a peppery, buttery taste that assimilated incredibly with the peaches and gelato. This dessert is a great example of why cooking seasonally is so much fun. Our dessert was paired with a passito, which is a supremely sweet wine to finish a satisfying Farmer’s Market Dinner at Michael’s on Naples.
Michael’s on Naples is open Monday to Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. (for brunch) and 5 to 10 p.m. The Farmer’s Market Dinner is $45 per person, with an optional wine pairing for $30 per person.
For more information about Michael’s on Naples, visit www.michaelsonnaples.com.
5620 E. 2nd St.
Long Beach, CA 90803