Your guide to the Taste of Little Italy

At the 2016 Taste of Little Italy, Ironside Fish & Oyster gave out freshly-shucked oysters (Courtesy photo)

June 8, 2017

2:18 PM

One of San Diego’s preeminent dining destinations opens the door to dozens of restaurants, dessert shops, breweries and wineries next week. Here’s what you need to know about the annual Taste of

Little Italy

on June 14.

When:

Wednesday, 5-9 p.m.

Why you should go:

With big-name, classic Italian restaurants and dynamic new-comers, Little Italy is the undisputed best neighborhood for dining in the county.

Don’t-miss bites:

With so many excellent options, this “Taste Of” has to be split into two routes,

North

and

South, with about 20 stops each. North is more new-American cheffy, with Herb + Eatery, Juniper & Ivy, Ironside Fish & Oyster and our top pick, The Crack Shack - which is serving mini buttermilk biscuit sliders with miso maple butter and fried chicken. On the more Italian-focused South route, the new restaurant Barbusa is serving up a must-try dish: Bolognese al forno.

Details:

$40 per route; printed tickets can be exchanged for a Taste Passport at the event. Check-in at the corner of India and W. Date Streets beginning at 4:30 p.m. Go to

tasteoflittleitalysd.com.
Twitter:

@sdeditgirl; michele.parente@sduniontribune.com

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Michele Parente

Michele Parente is the Dining, Wine + Lifestyle reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Her areas of expertise include the Valle de Guadalupe wine region, fashion, television, women’s issues and coverage of aging, such as the impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia and family caregiving. Michele is the former Sunday and features editor, where she oversaw profiles, special projects, such as the Legacy of WWII and in-depth reports on a variety of topics. She joined the U-T in 2003, supervising coverage areas that have included features, fashion, TV, Food, Consumer Health and Arts & Entertainment. Previously, Michele was the assistant features editor at The Oregonian, in Portland, as well as the Portland City Hall reporter. She spent 10 years at New York Newsday as a reporter on the crime, education, state legislature and New York City Hall beats. She was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting. A native New Yorker, Michele received her B.A. in political science and Italian Literature at UC Berkeley. In 1980, she studied at L’Università di Urbino, in Italy. One of her life’s goals is to make her way through each of the world’s great wine regions.