April 2026.

We are staying in a B&B in Trumansburg New York and our hostess suggested this restaurant in Ithaca, 20 minutes to the south. Ithaca is the location of Cornell University (I had no idea) and seems to reflect the gravity and excitement of the famous college. There is a restaurant row with the kind of eatery you see in college towns all over the US and also in the part of cities where a university is located, here and in Canada.

Mercado is an ordinary-looking place from the outside and inside is a long thin room with an active cheerful atmosphere. We got a friendly welcome at 530 as the place opened and were seated at a small side row table. It’s Italian cuisine, the menu listing an interesting bunch of cocktails and then “starters” like crostini sampler, “clams casino”, tonight’s soup, chicken liver,  pickled red onion crostini etc. Someone has managed to avoid the misuse of “entrée”; the mains are called specialities. These vary from night to night although the names and concept are the same. Our very nice waitress described tonight’s specifics although with her rapidfire accent and my hearing I had to grill Robin later about the details. There’s a ravioli, fresh fish in parchment, porchetta, chicken picatta. On the other side of the menu is a long wine list, entirely Italian and featuring recondite regions and producers. You know real Italian cuisine is coming but it won’t be expensive fine dining.

Other tables filled up with a mix of what looked like middle-aged adult locals and students and sounded like cheery conversation, never too loud. We started with a selection of crostini including the crisp sour caramelized onion topped with goat cheese. Robin had a paccheri pasta, a thick flat noodle with white bolognese sauce, beef, sausage, mushroom, and cream. Absolutely delicious. The fat noodles were boiled to perfection. Mine was a porchetta with a classy wine and stock-based reduction, broccolini (not much) and a sextet of little potatoes boiled with their skin on. The meat exhaled succulent pork fat flavour, the simple delicious sauce sopped up with fresh Italian bread and the little potatoes.

The wine man helped us with the farraginous Italian wine list and we ended up with a northern Italian nebbiolo Venezio Giulia which had been handled much differently than barolo and was very light, a lot like pinot noir. Everything for just over C$200 with a 20% tip.

After eating in a few upstate New York’s insipid semi-rural Finger Lakes’ restaurants for a week we were ready for this dinner. We plan to go back tomorrow night for a reprise of this quietly classy bistro in the shadow of the famous academy.

Food 9.3 service 9.0 ambience 8.3 value 9.0, peace and quiet 8.6.