A Riviera Runs Through It

Rocca is the first Boston restaurant to highlight the food of Liguria, the Italian Riviera. The region’s definitive English-language cookbook, by Fred Plotkin, is called Recipes from Paradise for good reason: Liguria is the home of pesto and focaccia and olive oil so fine they recall those of its French neighbor, Provence. The best of the south of France with the best of the north of Italy—what could be better?

But this isn’t why Rocca was so long anticipated or has been so popular since it opened on the South End’s Harrison Avenue this spring. Rocca is the newest venture of restaurateur extraordinaire Michela Larson and her longtime partners from her Rialto years, Gary Sullivan and Karen Haskell. Seeing Larson back at a check stand and circulating among tables, every bit as beautiful and ebullient as when she debuted the original Michela’s in 1985, feels like the big number from Hello, Dolly!—except she’s the one saying hello.

The ceilings at Rocca are dramatically lofty; in the main dining room, upstairs, the brick walls are interrupted by ceiling-high mirrors, flatteringly angled to make you appear thin. For artwork, there are odd rope knots. The nautical theme recalls Liguria’s fishing origins, I guess, as does a lighted channel that curves along the ceiling and whose colors change every so often—now you think you’re underwater, now in a red-light district.

The cream of the South End found Rocca right away. “Wall-to-wall beautiful men,” friends reported a few weeks in. It’s exciting to be there, and the spirited noise levels make it seem hipper yet. Lately, the crowd has become more heterogeneous, thanks in part to the free parking, which pulls in a suburban contingent. Everyone gets a warm welcome—a Larson group trademark—and the friendliness and skill of the staff was as striking when I wasn’t recognized as when Larson, an old friend, was at the door.