For a night out on the town with the family, we decided to head to I Cugini at the recommendation of their concierge. This hardly pronounceable restaurant was in Santa Monica and had a pretty cool setup with an outdoorsy patio-esque seating area. The menu offered some pretty good-looking food, but the menu wasn’t as robust as a typical Italian place. Nonetheless, I was transfixed by an item on the menu that I had never seen before. It was called a “Bomba” and was mixed up with the pizzas, so I knew it had to be somewhat similar to pizza.
I asked the waiter what it was, and she said that bomba meant bomb in Italian, so the dish was sort of like an Italian quesadilla. I had never eaten a bomb before, so I decided to get one. The bomb I chose had fontina, mascarpone cheese, prosciutto and truffle oil.
When it arrived, I saw the reason it was called a bomb. The thing was all puffed up like fresh-baked pita and covered with strips of prosciutto. Then the waitress sliced it up and I could see that beautiful mix of cheese oozing out and waiting for me to eat it. It was sliced into pizza-style wedges, but it was a lot harder to eat than pizza. All the cheesy goodness and flakey bread made the bomb a little tough to eat, but when I got it into my mouth, each bite was delicious. It was also a lot lighter to eat than pizza, so I ate the whole thing without destroying my stomach.
The bomba is definitely worth getting at I Cugini, and although I can’t speak for their other food, I now know to look out for bombas when I find myself at an Italian restaurant.
