Articles

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Luigi’s Offers Pasta At a Pleasing Price

LUIGI’S D’ ITALIA, Anaheim. 533-1300. Italian. Open for lunch Tuesday to Saturday, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Monday. Wine and beer. Casual. Parking. Credit cards. Reservations. Full menu available all open hours from $1.50 to $8.25.

If you can imagine pasta fit for princes at pizzeria prices in a place patterned for peasants, you have a grasp on the Luigi’s experience.

If you think it extraordinary for 22-year-old Luigi Catizone to have already been a chef and acting head chef for Antonello, one of Southern California’s finest haute Italian cuisine strongholds, and then voluntarily move into the kitchen of his own tiny trattoria featuring paper napkins, 12 tables with plastic chairs, no decoration fancier than its beer-advertising lampshades, and no price over $8.25 – you will nevertheless find that Cinderella-in-reverse fairy tale being played out in this humble theater.

If you come here for Saturday night dinner, as we did, one quick look at the stark interior, that makes many a coffee shop look by comparison like a landfall of luxury, could motivate you to flee into the night. But that would be a big mistake. The kind of cooking going on behind this unpretentious façade is the stuff which addiction is made.

We sat at our table amid the blare of a jukebox and in the glare of an overhead spotlight. Our waitress announced, “No wine list; that’s one thing we need soon.” We ordered Soave, the popular Italian white. “Do you want it chilled or room temperature?” That shook us up a bit, as well it might. While our first bottle came chilled as ordered, the second arrived at a ghastly room temperature. We tucked in our paper napkins. Bread came, but no bread plate.

“This is a long way from Antonello,” I ventured. Right? Not necessarily so. With arrival of food, Antonello and all the magic that makes it one of Orange County’s finest quietly came into the room never to leave until after coffee.

Salad of juicy tomato, crunchy garden lettuce, and tangy vinaigrette was basic crispy stuff, though my wife is happier with some sliced mushrooms and complex greens. Bread too hot to touch, fresh out of Luigi’s ovens, came immediately with plenty of butter, never to stop coming until meal’s end.

My friend exulted in his fresh scampi cooked with garlic, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, basil, and butter. His wife was no less pleased with her fresh mussels cooked in their shells with whole peeled tomato, olive oil, garlic, parsley, basil, oregano, and clam juice.

My wife’s Vitello Piccatta with lemon and capers sauce slipped a little, coming off a touch on the tough and salty side. I was soon to find out why the Vitello Sorrentino has been the chef’s favorite ever since, in a flash of inspiration, he created it as a lunch special and it sold to 70 customers the first day. It was a phantasmagoria of veal scallops with marsala, back olives, mushrooms, melted cheese, bacon, and demiglace sauce – a masterpiece with all the wrong dietetic elements and their superb flavors perfectly blended. Spaghetti Bolognese with our veal dishes did not relax the pasta standards already established.

Chef Luigi has created a strong menu of 15 pizzas, 11 pastas, plus six more “pasta specialties,” six veals, three chickens, two eggplants, and a selection of dolce (sweets). Notable features include four fettuccines: Lasagna Casalingo, which he pronounces his favorite after a long, hard day over the stove, Vitello Pizzaiola cooked in wine with garlic and tomato sauce, Tagliatelle Fresce Bolognese described as fresh homemade pasta with meat sauce, and Eggplant Sorrentino stuffed with salami, ricotta cheese, and eggs baked in meat sauce.

Notwithstanding the imagination and quality built into this line-up, patrons pay under $5 for most of the pizzas and all of the pastas, under $6 for the chickens, and only $8.25 for the veals. The casa sells Italian wines at their cost plus $2, and pours C.K. Mondavi house wine for a mere $3.95 per liter.

Luigi’s shares that disconcerting indifference found in many trattorias as to whether the white or the red wine is chilled, and without vigilance it would be easy to end up with warm white and a blistering cold red in the same sitting. More wine choices, including some Californias, would be useful accompaniment for food of this caliber.

Luigi joined his father, Dominic Catizone, to create this restaurant minus outside financial help and all its pitfalls. They play to keep it all in the family by expanding and upgrading only as earnings permit. That procedure can be easier both on the proprietor’s nerves and the customer’s pocketbook.

The youthful maestro is not too busy to come out and meet the customers, even tearing himself away from the hot stove to do so. You will see him, father Dominic, sister Nina just over from Italy, and Aunt Clara. If school is not in session, add kid brother Tony, 14, who is being taught the restaurant ropes from busboy on up.

Luigi Catizone, born in Calabria, started his restaurant career in the kitchens of Tustin’s Roma d’Italia at age 12, moved into Alfredo’s galley at 15, then completed his apprenticeship at Café Pasquini, Pronto and in his native Italy, before becoming a protégé of the celebrated Antonio Cagnolo at Antonello from 1979 until he opened his own place in August, 1981.

That’s quite a dossier for a young man born only in 1960, the year John F. Kennedy was elected president.