Salumi at Coppa

In 2009's food-obsessive equivalent of Waiting for Godot, Boston stewed over the long-delayed opening of Coppa (253 Shawmut Avenue, Boston, 617.391.0902), Ken Oringer's new pocket-sized Italian restaurant in the South End. The lineup fueled the frenzy: from his wildly popular Toro, Oringer had drafted the immensely talented Jamie Bissonnette as partner and exec chef, plus the peerlessly convivial Courtney Bissonnette as GM. When it finally opened four months late, this tightly spaced 40-seat hangout (with 24 patio seats in better weather) was predictably overrun - and will be for the foreseeable future.

There's good reason for the stampede: Coppa so deliciously executes its small-plates menu that I struggled to choose one representative dish. "Stuzzi" ($5) include incredible meatballs al forno, superbly rich, fine-grained pork polpetti in a tomato sauce unctuous with house-made lardo. Cold antipasti ($9) like fluke crudo celebrate raw seafood in preparations so beautiful they wouldn't look out of place at Uni, Oringer's Back Bay sashimi bar. A wood-fired oven turns out small thin-crust pizzas ($15) with inventive topping combinations like oxtail, marrow, and horseradish. Handmade pastas ($12) are among the best I've tasted in Boston, featuring showstoppers like spaghetti carbonara with egg, pancetta, and sea urchin, an utterly beguiling counterpoising of land and sea flavors. Bar manager Corey Bunnewith (formerly of Drink) makes the most of a beer/wine/cordial license, shaking up well-balanced, intriguing cocktails like the Lenny e Joan (made with sloe gin, dry vermouth, Cynar, and lime).

But I think the soul of the place is to be found in Bissonette's salumi ($7), a labor of love that few local chefs bother to pursue in-house. The cured-meat selections vary weekly and include some well-chosen imports as well as his house-made offerings. All are sliced behind the bar, where patrons can goggle at Coppa's "show pony," a gleaming Berkel slicer that is doubtless worth more than my car. I've been transported to a land of offal-y goodness on the back of few bites of coppa di testa (pork head cheese), a rather Francophilic pâté de campagne, and of course coppa, the Campanian cold cut of dry-cured pork neck. Elemental in flavor, these are unalloyed expressions of nose-to-tail love of the pig, and they reveal an essential Italian trust in source-ingredient quality combined with patience, craft, and passion. Chef Bissonnette's fabulous charcuterie encapsulates why you'll soon wait 90 minutes on the curb for a sliver of Coppa, and be glad you did. You might as well get in line now.