Spanish octopus with potatoes and sweet baby peppers at Little Sage.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
A few years later, that young chef bought Sage from Matarazzo. Tony Susi grew up in the North End, working at his father’s butcher shop and bussing tables at local restaurants. He cooked with Todd English at Olives. And now he had his own place in his own neighborhood. Within a few years, Sage had earned national attention for dishes like pillowy, delicate gnocchi and baked, stuffed fazzoletti pasta. Susi eventually moved the restaurant to a larger space in the South End, where it operated until 2009. He went on to other kitchens, including Capo in South Boston and Bar Enza at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square.
Get Winter Soup Club
A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter.
These were big restaurants. Eating there, one felt Susi’s skill as a top-level chef and manager. But it was different.
Now comes Little Sage, with 50 seats and a bar, an open kitchen at the back. It’s a collaboration, once again, between Susi and Matarazzo, who previously ran Locale in this space. And here is Susi at the stove, a few cooks at his side. Diners can look over and watch him at work; he can look over and watch diners taste his food. There is much to be said for coming full circle, poetically and practically.
Chef Tony Susi comes full circle at Little Sage, an homage to the restaurant Sage he ran three decades ago.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
The restaurant space is divided, charmingly cramped; to reach our table, we have to squeeze so intimately past a post we feel we should apologize to it. There are white tiled floors and walls, wood tables, and nice light coming through the tall windows when one visits for weekend lunch. Service is a little green and very sweet.
The gnocchi return. They are as pillowy and delicate as ever. They tumble together on the white plate, interspersed with pieces of lobster, dolloped with milky stracciatella cheese, which has all of burrata’s rich charms but is even looser and more relaxed. There’s a little bite from dandelion greens, a little lift from fennel pollen. The sauce is swoony, with deep lobster flavor, a bit herbaceous from the fennel.
The fazzoletti dish is back as well. (It appeared at Bar Enza, too.) Little Sage has a brick oven that also turns out chicken with crushed potatoes, brown butter, and sage; monkfish with leeks, artichokes, capers, yuzu, and salsa verde; and steak. (Locale’s pizza is still available for takeout.) The handkerchief pasta is folded around a mixture of short rib, spinach, and fontina cheese, then blasted in that oven with cherry tomatoes until its edges bubble and char to a shiny black. The dish sounds like it will be heavy; it is surprisingly, wonderfully light.
This is Susi’s touch. The ingredients are simple and fresh, the cooking is deft, there is subtle complexity.
Fazzoletti from the brick oven at Little Sage in the North End.Little Sage
A meal might start with herbed flatbread or warm olives and ciabatta for the table. Then there is hamachi crudo, octopus with potatoes and sweet peppers, or skewers of roasted lamb with chickpea caponata to be had. A salad of citrus segments, shaved fennel, and pretty, speckled Castelfranco lettuce is more than the sum of its parts, drizzled with olive oil and blessed with a handful of excellent bright green uber-pistachios. A skillet of littleneck clams is an ideal version of this dish. Each shell opens to a just-cooked clam, in a pool of garlic butter kissed with lemon, with a piece of sauce-dampened bread for further dipping.
Also on the pasta menu: smoked ricotta ravioli with blistered cherry tomatoes; casarecce with spicy shrimp, tomatoes, and olives; chitarra with pork and lamb shoulder ragu. We catch a heady whiff of black truffle butter from a dish of lumache with roasted mushrooms and Brussels sprouts at an adjacent table.
A salad of citrus, shaved fennel, Castelfranco lettuce, and pistachios.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
The menu is small, which is just the right size for Little Sage; there’s nothing on it that feels extraneous. It does include two desserts, an olive oil cake and basil panna cotta with strawberries and sweet, rich saba, a grape syrup that tastes like dessert balsamic. The wine list is mostly Italian; cocktails range from a Venetian spritz with a skewer of Castelvetrano olives to an espresso martini.
A friend who lives in the North End visited Little Sage a few days before I got there. We talk about restaurants all the time. I can’t remember her ever texting before, as she did this time, to say: “Have you been there yet? It’s so good.”
That’s how I felt, too, during my first visit there. Hey, tourists outside, looking at the menu, come on in. This is what the North End is supposed to taste and feel like. It was just one meal at a restaurant that only just opened, but in a city glutted with Italian food, my gosh it was refreshing.
352 Hanover St., North End, Boston, 617-742-9600, www.littlesageboston.com. Antipasti $16-$22, pasta $20-$29, al forno dishes $22-$45, desserts $12, cocktails $14-$15.
From the brick oven: chicken with crushed potatoes, brown butter, and sage.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @devrafirst.