Trattoria da Jonny is a fairly large place spread over 2 rooms.  Exposed brick is on one wall corner and the small bare wood tables are set for 2 or 4 people with paper place mats and napkins.  Music plays in the background and the large menus contain both English and Italian.  The ceiling has exposed wood beams in part of the room and floor appeared to be a large plank wood but was really a type of tile.  The service was friendly and efficient even while a number of family members stopped by to eat and/or chat.

 

We started with Bruschetta with thistles and cheese, which was four pieces of toasted bread well piled with cheese and chopped thistles.  There were 2 sauces on the plate under the bread, the yellow one tasting of yellow bell pepper and the other unknown.  It was very good yet mild in flavor.  They also brought additional bottle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil if you desired.  I found a little addition helped.

 

Bread service was a basket with short, thick sticks and cut bread that was a bit dry.  Unremarkable.

 

Home made pappardelle with pork cheek ragú was a nice wide noodle coated with the velvety and tender pork cheek meat sauce.  The plate was surrounded by dots of various colors most tasting of different colors of bell peppers.  There was no spice component detected, except for the pepper in the pasta.  We split an order of this and they were nice enough to split it in the kitchen and decorate both plates.  The black pepper pasta was rolled pretty thin and thus not cooked al dente.  Bits of carrot were mild and fit in well with the dish and the pasta itself had a little spice.  It was good.

 

The Frittua mista di pesce con verdurine croccanti was a mixed fried fish with crispy vegetables.  This is a classic Venetian dish and here the vegetables included carrots, zucchini, red peppers, yellow peppers and onions.  The seafood was mostly pieces of squid but also had some shrimp, sardines and one langoustine.  It was a nice light coating on all and fried to a good crisp without being too greasy.  If was a generous and tasty offering.

 

For dessert the option that caught my eye was the raisins or cherries in grappa.  I had never seen this before and being a grappa fan wanted to try it.  I asked our server which he preferred and he thought maybe the raisins but he was nice enough to bring a smaller serving of each for us to try.  The cherries were in grappa made from prosecco and this made the grappa too sweet for me and the liquid became cloudy with the cherries.  While I loved the cherries the raisins mixed much better and looked better in the liquid, which was a white grappa.  It was fun but probably not something for everyday.

 

We finished with a coffee.