Geyserville's Diavola fires up cuisine scene

Stuffed squash blossoms seem to be all the rage at local restaurants right now, but they vary in quality. The ones at 25° Brix in Napa were greasy. The ones at Scopa in Healdsburg were delectable. But the ones at Diavola Pizzeria and Salumeria in Geyserville are not only the best stuffed squash blossoms imaginable, they are perhaps the most delicious dish being served at any restaurant in the Wine Country right now.

These are not the typical stuffed squash blossoms, filled with ricotta cheese, battered, then fried in oil. The Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms ($13.75 ****) at Diavola are filled with a fresh-tasting mince of shrimp, tomato, parsley and zucchini, as well as bits of spicy chiles that tingle the tongue. The filling is also hot because the blossoms have been dipped in batter and plunged into the deep fryer. The oil is exactly the right temperature to puff the batter into the lightest, crinkliest, most delicate crust ever. You get three of these beauties on the plate, and they're so good you may want to order two portions and call it a meal. But order them soon, because the season for fresh squash blossoms will be over before you know it.

Executive Chef Dino Bugica handles the cooking. He’s still the executive chef at Santi, the well-respected Italian ristorante owned by Bugica and Doug Swett just a few doors north, but Liza Hinman is Santi’s chef de cuisine and does the cooking there while Bugica is focusing his talents on the gourmet pizzeria and salumeria he opened in July. This team made Geyserville a destination for foodies with Santi (Italian for saints), and have now only enhanced the town’s reputation with Diavola (Italian for she-devil).

As you enter the old brick building, you’ll notice a long bar to your left and above it, a rack with house-made cured meats dangling from meathooks. Take this as a good sign. Artisanal salumi (the word means dry-cured pork products in Italian) are gaining favor in our region: Paul Bertolli’s Fra Mani in Berkeley, Duskie Estes and John Stewart’s Bovolo in Healdsburg, and now Diavola in Geyserville offer us charcuterie at a level of quality that a decade ago you could only find imported.

So for sure order the Salami and Cheese Antipasto ($12.75 ****). There’s a daily selection of both the meats and cheeses. On a recent night, the salumi included Toscano salami, a popular type of dry cured pork sausage that’s studded with garlic, fat, black peppercorns, and flavored with spices like cinnamon and cloves. It was sliced thinly, as was the Gentile (pronounced jen-TEE-lee) salami, named for the budello gentile, which literally translates as the “courteous intestine.” Both were excellent, aged to a sweet and intense ripeness. But the real revelation on the plate was the prosciutto, several thin slices of Parma-style ham that has been salt-cured and aged, but not smoked, and that, except for its darker color, was indistinguishable from Parma prosciutto in flavor and texture. Kudos to Chef Bugica for the effort.

The cheese on the plate was a pecorino soaked in Bordeaux red wine to color its rind. Its smooth fattiness and focused flavor was quite delicious. Also on the plate, little slices of Italian plums.

As you sit down at one of the bare wood tables, a clutch of house-made, slender, salty breadsticks make good noshing while you peruse the menu. You may notice the pressed tin ceiling that along with the brick walls give a 19th-century look to the place. At the far end of the bar is a blazing wood-fired oven presided over by a fierce statue of a tusked boar, and a busy chef making pizzas. A squad of cheerful and well-trained young people provides good service. The house music is an eclectic mix of just about anything.

Pizzas are best accompanied by beer — there are three on tap and six more by the bottle — or by wine. It’s a surprise to see “Peterson House Dego Red” on the wine list, since “dego,” which is usually spelled “dago,” is an ethnic slur for an Italian and, if anything, Diavola celebrates things Italian. Bugica says the term is an affectionate trope for the kind of rustic red wine an Italian farmer might make.

The wine list is chockablock with Italian wines. Some standouts include the 2005 Mastroberardino Falanghina for $38, a 2006 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo for $20, a 2005 Molettieri Aglianico for $43 — and, if you have a large party, gallon jugs of really good white or red wines from Hawkes winery in Jimtown for $50 each.

Seven pizzas are available in one size only, about 12 inches in diameter. The Salsiccia ($14 ***), or sausage, has the standard thin crust at Diavola. When it hits that hot wood-fired oven, bubbles of carbon dioxide from the fermenting yeast puff up the crust here and there along the edge. These blacken (because the dough over the bubble is really microthin) and pop, revealing the pretty beige crust inside. The sausage is house-made and the cheese is sheep’s milk pecorino.

The Don Franco ($10.50 ***) is a flavor explosion of capers, anchovies, tomatoes, hot peppers and oregano. It’s Sicilian in flavor but not in style, because the Sicilians like their crust thick. The capers, thankfully, are kept to a minimum.

The Margherita ($12.50 ***) is made with a tomato sauce base and is topped with basil and mozzarella di bufala, the true Italian mozzarella made with water buffalo milk. These animals, first brought to Italy by the Ostrogoths 1,500 years ago, give a milk that makes a finer, sweeter cheese than cow’s milk.

These pizzas are all very good, but the best may be the Quattro Formaggio ($13 ****), a superb pie made with four cheeses (mozzarella, provolone, pecorino, and fontina) and topped with pitted olives and sage leaves. When it arrives hot at the table, the cheeses give off a mingled ripe aroma that makes the mouth water. Three other pizzas use ingredients like pancetta, prosciutto, house-made Calabrese salame, Italian fryer peppers, mascarpone, radicchio, escarole, and bagna cauda — a spicy hot dip.

Other antipasti on the menu show the virtue of simplicity, which is a hallmark of Italian cuisine. What could be simpler than a mound of olive oil poached Albacore ($8.75 ** ½) with fresh beans braised in tomato sauce? The World’s Best Tomatoes from Geyserville ($10.75 ***) lived up to its name and paired the dead-ripe summer tomatoes with gorgonzola cheese. A Vegetable Antipasto ($12.75 ***) was a mélange of roasted eggplant, pickled zucchini, cippolini onions and roasted cauliflower, among other treasures, and while it doesn’t sound simple, all those flavors melded into a unified whole.

A Chocolate-Lavender Panna Cotta ($6.75 ***), served with sliced strawberries, crushed hazelnuts, and a sprig of lavender in bloom, made a fitting dessert.

To sum up: the menu is simple — antipasti and pizzas. The recipes are rustic and straightforward. The atmosphere is clean and spare. The food is excellent, and the magic is all Italian.