10345 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton

A couple weeks ago I finally went to Corso 32 for the first time. I know, I know, kind of embarrassing. It’s one of Edmonton’s most known restaurants. Seating only 32 (now 34) people (hence the name), reservations are a must. It is located downtown beside its sister restaurants, Bar Bricco and Ucellino, all owned by Daniel Costa. Corso is often seen in Avenue’s annual articles for best Italian and best restaurant in Edmonton. Being downtown, parking can be a bit scarce in this area. There’s always street parking around Jasper and the adjacent streets, and very easily accessible by LRT.

One thing that I really like about Corso is that they encourage sharing. They split up all of our dishes into two portions and served it to us accordingly. This was really nice because it makes it a lot easier to share things. We decided on two antipasti, a pasta, and a carne to share.

For our first antipasti, we got their house-made goat ricotta. I read a lot of reviews and this was the highlight in most of them, and it did not disappoint. It’s simply their house-made goat ricotta, topped with rosemary oil and maldon sea salt, served with crostini. This was a pretty generous portion in my opinion. It was more than enough for two people. The ricotta is amazing, really good flavour, and really simple. I definitely recommend this dish.

Our second appetizer was Noce Di Prosciutto which comes with prosciutto, Napa cabbage, Gala apples, Okanagan Walnuts, and topped with parmigiano. This was also another one of my favourite dishes of the night. I love prosciutto, and this was a great way to eat it. The apples added some nice flavour sweetness and the walnuts added some nice crunch. Very nice dish!

The pasta that we went with was the Garganelli. This comes with braised tuscan pork, porcini ragu and topped with parmigiano. They change their menu slightly seasonally, but have some classic dishes that remain the same. Corso 32 is known for making their own hand-made pasta, and for good reason. It was cooked perfectly al dente and had a great texture. It soaked up the sauce nicely. There was a nice earthy tone from the mushrooms and overall it was pretty good flavours. One thing that I would say about this dish was that I personally found it way too salty. It was still quite good, but very salty. I’ve also read some reviews and some agree that some of their dishes were a bit heavy on the salt as well.

Lastly, for our Carne, we had the Chinook salmon Mandorla, which comes with burnt butter, almonds, gala apples, radicchio, black kale, and balsamico. This was beautifully plated. By this point in the meal we were getting pretty full. The salmon was cooked perfectly and was very tender and soft. Very nicely seasoned and overall a nice dish. I really liked the almonds around the dish because it gave the dish a bit of extra crunch.

I really enjoyed my experience at Corso 32. Given that it’s so difficult to get reservations, and that it is higher level dining, I was prepared to pay an arm and a leg but I found that everything was very reasonably priced. It is pretty tight quarters inside, but I didn’t find it to be too intrusive to our dining experience. We were seated relatively close to another table of four but there was enough white noise so that you could hear your dining partner and not hear adjacent guests. The dishes came out at a good pace, and I’d say our service was very on par. I’ve read some things about the service not being great but I didn’t have any problems. It’s an Edmonton staple so I definitely giving it a try, or their sister restaurants