Eating At Montano’s: Classic Red Sauce On Cape Cod
By Ian MacAllen on Thursday, October 10th, 2024 at 6:41 pm
Montano’s sits alongside route 6 in North Truro, a kind of beacon I recognize in memories of my childhood driving out to Provincetown. We’d spend two weeks each summer in a cottage in Wellfleet, but in all those years driving by it, I’d never eaten there.
We never ate Italian food on the Cape, unless it was pasta we cooked at home. I don’t think I had even eaten a slice of pizza before the pandemic. Cape Cod was for eating seafood, like lobster rolls, fish and chips, or fried clams, and Portuguese-inspired foods like Malasada or Kale soup. When we ate out, we were much more likely to eat at places like PJ’s, Lobster Pot, or the Mayflower.
Montano’s came into being in 1988 when Connecticut-born chef Robert Montano purchased an existing restaurant. He took possession on my 7th birthday.
Montano had vacationed on the Cape since childhood, and having trained in culinary arts at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, saw an opportunity when an existing restaurant came up for sale.
The location had been a restaurant since the 1960s when Thompson’s Clam Bar expanded to the outer Cape. Thompsons’s first location in Harwich Port had opened in 1950, operated by a pair of brothers and had become a destination unto itself with seating for 550 and the capacity to serve 2,000 dinners a night. But seasonal restaurants, especially in the more remote outer Cape, are tough to staff and operate.
The North Truro Thompson’s location at 481 Route 6 soon closed, giving way to a series of restaurants that included the Rum Runner, Family Table, and Cap’n Josie’s.
There’s not much about these other restaurants. Family Table had a location in Wareham in the 1950s along 6A. My father recounted eating at one of the restaurants in the 1970s or early 1980s, describing it as “a Portuguese place.” He might have been describing Cap’n Josie’s, which the New York Times visited in 1986, where the author had a Fisherman’s Platter (“Portuguese style, with baked stuffed sole, scallops, shrimp, codfish cakes and clams casino…, served with salad, potato, rice or spaghetti, bread and butter”).
Montano was just 26 years old when he took over. He and his wife lived in an apartment above the restaurant in the first years as they grew the business. Montano’s became known for handmade pasta and a classic Italian American menu. But by 2023, Robert Montano was ready to retire and started looking for a buyer.
Ed Medeiros, a patron of the restaurant for 16 years, quickly made an offer. Medeiros intended on changing very little about the restaurant, keeping the staff, and maybe adding lunch service.
I had been meaning to pay a visit to Montano’s. East End Books in Provincetown hosted me for a book event when Red Sauce was released, and a few of the attendees had recommended Montano’s (as well as Ciro & Sals).
Early in the summer, my in-laws were up on the Cape with us. They were helping with day-time childcare, and so on one of their evenings off they paid a visit to the restaurant. They returned with glowing reviews, and a birthday gift card for my wife and I. A few weeks later, we left our toddler behind with my parents and had dinner for two.
The high season of midsummer had already ended by the last week of August when we finally found time to have dinner. The restaurant was noticeably quieter, and we were seated straight away.
The pasta is the highlight of the restaurant still, with true classics like carbonara, vodka sauce, and bolognese served on house made noodles. But since this is Cape Cod, seafood too is integrated into the menu.
We ordered wine, and the waitress bright bread, oil, and vinegar.
We decided to split a few appetizers beginning with arancini. I’m always fascinated how arancini have become a standard on red sauce menus over the last decade and a half – yet historically were far less common.
Montano’s arancini arrived in a cream sauce. I wouldn’t in any way think of this as authentically Italian, but are the perfect representation of how Italian American cuisine continues to evolve traditions, even today.
The sauce was absolutely delicious too, particularly as the filling of the arancini, a bolognese sauce, spilled out. There is something incongruous having two competing sauces, but it worked. The flavor together was quite good. I dipped bread in the remaining cream sauce.
The fried mozzarella and marinara did not disappoint. I think this is another interesting evolution of the mozzarella stick, where big fat chunks of cheese are fried instead of narrow sticks. I’ve seen a lot of variations on this, including super chunky mozzarella “sticks” that are really just big logs of cheese, and others like these that are slabs.
The thickness changes the consistency, and ratio of breading to cheese. The thickness of the cheese meant there was some substance to stick a fork into, making it a bit easier to eat, and the breading remained attached to the melt cheese.
We ordered calamari fritti, and went ahead and had it topped with peppers. The pickled vegetables on top of the calamari contrasted the fried fattiness, and also included some artichoke hearts and olives. The calamari rings were large and the batter light, but the pickled vegetables could probably have been better curated.
As much as I wanted to try a classic rigatoni vodka sauce, I knew I had to order some seafood. Scallops, along with oysters and lobster, are usually locally caught, so I went with the scallops over linguine.
The scallops were like butter, which of course is the whole point. There was a nice little crust on the outside. If there was anything to criticize, it was that there were too many capers.
My wife doesn’t love seafood like I do, so she instead went for a chicken and pasta dish – the Jerk Chicken Pasta. The rigatoni arrived in a spicy cream sauce with a wonderful, and unique flavor.
The Jerk Chicken pasta is the quintessential example of how cuisine evolves – how authentic cuisine evolves. For the last several decades, Jamaican immigrants have become the backbone of the Cape’s culinary scene serving in the back of the house.
Those culinary influences are beginning to pop up in restaurants everywhere, and on Montano’s menu that included Jerk Chicken Pasta, Jamaican Jerk Swordfish, Curry Shrimp, and Sweet & Sour Caribbean Chicken. The fusion of cooking styles and flavor profiles has long been how the best dishes evolve in any cuisine, and to see menus with both modern food and classic dishes side by side leaves me hopeful of the food yet to come. I’m looking forward to another meal at Montano’s, just as soon as we can trick the grandparents into providing childcare again.
Montano’s
481 Route 6
North Truro
