Monty’s Red Sauce Opens in Southeast Portland

As a young culinary student, Adam Berger traveled to Montelupo Albese, within the Piedmont region of Italy, to learn pasta-making from the experts. He brought that education back to Portland, rolling dough at the legendary Italian tasting menu spot, Genoa, and at his own restaurants: the beloved (and now closed) Tabla Pasta E Vino in Kerns, and Montelupo, a traditional-leaning Italian restaurant named for the city where he learned his craft.

Despite his adoration of Piedmontese cooking, however, Berger and his team’s newest venture is a testament to his first love: the marinara-drenched spaghetti and meatballs, thick slabs of chicken parmesan, and Caesar salads of the New Jersey trattorias he frequented as a kid. Monty’s Red Sauce opened Tuesday night in Sellwood-Moreland, just around the corner from the group’s second restaurant, the Focacceria. A sprawling dining hall devoted to East Coast Italian American dining, all Monty’s is missing are the checkered tablecloths and portraits of lounge singers.

Beyond the Little Italy influences, the theme for Monty’s can be summarized in a single word: big. “We want to do big portions: spaghetti meatballs, chicken parm, eggplant parm, meatball heroes,” says Berger. To that end, culinary director and chef Sedona McCaffrey-Allen has developed a menu that tackles all the crowd-pleasers, including appetizers like garlic bread and fried calamari. The restaurant’s “mozzarella bar,” McCaffrey-Allen’s take on an antipasti plate, offers choices of cheese and sides like artichoke hearts, butter beans, and olive tapenade. Fresh pastas made in-house take up the bulk of the menu, including linguini shrimp scampi, baked penne alla vodka, and spaghetti puttanesca swimming with clams, calamari, and capers. If the generous pasta servings aren’t enough, there’s also add-ons like Italian sausage and shrimp.

For entrees, Monty’s keeps it traditional: eggplant or chicken parmesan with red sauce spaghetti, chicken marsala, and a culotte steak with roasted potatoes and vegetables. The chicken and eggplant parm, meatballs, and a chicken Caesar are also available as sandwiches, served on sesame buns. Sides including roasted vegetables and a rotating dessert assortment (think tiramisu and gelato sundaes) round out the menu, with cocktails and Italian wines by the glass and bottle to pair.

The team’s dedication to going big includes the space itself: formerly home to French bistro Rue Cler and brunch hot spot Beeswing, the sprawling dining room is around 4,000 square feet, dwarfing Montelupo’s 1,500-square-foot plan. It seats around 80 in its red leather booths and dark wood tables, and another 10 fit at the long wooden bar. Unlike the dark, intimate trattorias of the Mid-Atlantic, Monty’s dining room is bright, tall, and spacious. Posters and paintings adorn the walls, the largest a illustration of the company’s wolf motif (Montelupo literally translates to “wolf mountain”). For a touch of whimsy, the booths are topped with hand-sewn striped mini curtains.

Like Montelupo, Monty’s entrance features a marketplace of grab-and-go items, including sauces, wines, and dried pasta from Berger’s own Rallenti Pasta line. The expansive kitchen, more than twice the size of Montelupo’s, now serves as the restaurant group’s commissary kitchen.

“We’re going to have pots and pots of bolognese and red sauce going all day,” says Berger. “It’s big, airy, vibrant, boisterous, fun, unpretentious. You know, comfort food. We’re not reinventing the wheel.”