The Localvore: Costello's spices up lunch, Italian style

Lunch is often a cop-out. Let’s face it: lunch is something that happens in between parts of life. At best, it is a short respite from the unpleasant hustle that occupies the everyday; at worst, a necessary evil.
That is why, at first, Costello’s Market seems strange. There is something about the restaurant — the unassuming awning, an ever-changing menu writ in proud block letters in chalk on the back wall — that makes you, for a moment, forget the way you have thought about lunch before. The food at Costello’s gives you pause: the process of feeding yourself ceases to be a chore and becomes a meal.
Upon entrance through the door, tucked quietly away behind the Stone Leaf Tea House and next to Marble Works Pharmacy, the first word that comes to mind is rustic. Not rustic as in “Oh, an abacus as a cash register. How quaint!” Rather, it is rustic like an Italian kitchen in the evening: the smell of basil; fresh meat, simply but carefully prepared; hosts exceeding in both passion and competence.
If you can make it past the impressive selection of daily fresh fish and faithfully Italian expanse of meats — in every spice, flavor and quantity your heart could desire — you will find the menu extensive and unusually convenient. John Hamilton, co-owner and deviser of all dishes, has sampled from the breadth of Italian cuisine to make a lunch menu of sandwiches, soups, wraps and salads that allow you to take Italy mouthful by mouthful: find goat cheese, beets and spinach in an herbed wrap, the proscuitto of Parma between tomato and provolone nestled in a bun, the taste of Tuscany in a spoonful.
These items do not even begin to cover the dinner menu, graced with a variety of salads, pastas paired with fresh fish and sausage and a roasted duck, which promises no disappointment.
If the quality of food does not stand as enough of a testament to the dedication of the ownership to both the art of food and taste, the overwhelming array of foodstuffs available for purchase would dispel any suspicion. The walls are lined with never-before-seen-pastas, five different olive oils and as many balsamics, chocolate sardines from Paris, Spanish almonds dusted in cocoa and — unavoidably — wine.
Costello’s selection of wine is nothing short of remarkable. In a space barely large enough to hold 20 people, it offers a mouth-watering selection of several dozen French and Italian wines, varying from familiar table wines and Chiantis to the sparkle of a Prosecco or sweet Moscato. In the winter months, co-owners Carolyn Costello and John Hamilton hold wine tastings featuring items from their catering menu and a generous array of red and white. Recent features include the surprising, full-bodied Feudi di San Gregorio, a complex white that is never heavy on the palate, the notes of peach and pear held up by a decisive mineral backbone, and the red Cannonau di Sardegna, beginning with warm notes of cherry and plum, rounding into softly checked — but definitely present —tannins, ending in the dark, subtle taste of dates. The Moscato d’Asti is nothing but a summer evening in a bottle: sweet but not cloying, playful florals complemented by the memory of citrus — perhaps a kumquat, or a raspberry fresh-picked.
It is hard to say enough about Costello’s. There is something new every day, spun from Hamilton’s imagination. The catering menu boasts the delicacies of gorgonzola and parmasean cheese puffs, fruited with homemade Mostarda; chicken and duck liver paté paired with the sweetness of caramelized onions; delicately fried olives stuffed with salami; garlic chive tuna carpaccio to make even a tuna-hater cry for pleasure.
Costello’s Market, located at 2 Maple St. in the Marble Works district, is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.