Review: Luciano's in St. Louis

With the economy still not what all of us would like it to be, St. Louisans who dine out a lot are looking with favor these days at trattorias and bistros. They're Italian and French, respectively, but both result in a smaller tab for the diner and a style of cooking that is more home- or country-cooking and less haute cuisine.

Luciano's, in the building just west of the Ritz-Carlton, is a relatively new trattoria entry from the Del Pietro family, which has a large slice of the Clayton restaurant business with Portabella, Shiitake and Kilkenny's Pub offering a variety of fare.

The large room, displaying white tablecloths and a good-sized bar and waiting area, is casual and comfortable. Tables are well-spaced, offering a modicum of privacy, and some booths on the sides of the room offer even more. The staff is pleasant, competent and seems well-versed on the menu and the extensive wine list.

The menu is attractive, offering the kind of family fare that the Guru enjoys. Hearty dishes like osso buco (a favorite of Mrs. Guru), pappardelle pasta with its wide ribbons, roasted pork loin, a side dish offering of eggplant, tomato and white beans all are ideal winter dishes, the kind of food, to use an old saying, that sticks to the ribs. Marc del Pietro is the executive chef, with Brian Steinman and Adam
Horn as sous chefs.

A couple of recent dinner visits were quite good, and though there were some soft spots here and there, the outlook is good. The preparation was simple, as it should be with trattoria fare, and many of the flavors were big and bold, with garlic, dried tomatoes, basil, lemon and other heightened flavors adding delicious overtones to many dishes.

The menu ranges the length and breadth of Italy, from the side dish of spinach with pine nuts and raisins, from the island of Sicily, to risotto, which hails from the north. When it comes to pasta, Luciano's avoids the easy-to-overcook extra-thin angels' hair in favor of penne and bucatini and pappardelle, which tend to absorb lots of sauce and also have a robust texture of their own.

Orecchiette, or "little ears," is excellent with rock shrimp, butternut squash and pancetta, a hearty, smoky form of bacon. Butternut squash may not sound like a regular pasta companion, but Del Pietro's kitchen, using kitchen-garden vegetables, provides some interesting mix-and-match techniques.

His osso buco is subtitled d'agnello, meaning that a lamb shank, rather than the more traditional veal, is the base. This one was wonderful, too, a large shank, benefitting from long, slow cooking that made the meat fall off the bone and cut with a fork. Alongside was a delicious side of eggplant, tomatoes and white beans, a hearty, rich dish of exquisite flavor. The spinach was just as good, indicating that Del Pietro knows how to work his vegetables.

The menu is wide-ranging, including an appetizer of duck ravioli with escarole and more of that butternut squash, a darkly flavored dish that was a delightful preparation for the remainder of dinner. The pasta was tender, the duck tasty. Oysters on the half-shell, available one night, came from the Pacific Northwest and were excellent. Fish soup was less appealing, a broth of one-dimensional flavor to which some shellfish had been added so late in the process that their tastes had not had time to blend into the soup.

Pizzas are tasty, of a good size for a couple to divide as an appetizer, or sufficient as a meal with the addition of a salad and/or a side dish. Two of the five pizzas on the menu come with mozzarella cheese, two with fontina and one is uncheesed -- chicken with rosemary and potatoes.

Artichoke hearts, sausage and that delicious pancetta are excellent toppings, and there's a vegetarian model, too. We tried the artichoke heart pizza, which also had some chicken and roasted peppers on top, and was perfectly cooked and delicious.

A sausage stew was passable, with a large amount of different sausages, but most had been cooked so long that almost no flavor remained. They were served with polenta, which was so good one almost didn't need the sausages. Grilled salmon was perfectly cooked, and topped with roasted sweet pepper and thin slices of fennel, which added a nice hint of licorice. Those who do not like licorice -- or fennel -- can easily scrape the vegetable (it looks a lot like celery) from the fish.

The wine list is lengthy, with some good values by the glass, and desserts included a tasty apple cheesecake and a nut tart that seemed more like a pecan pie, though it did have a notable crust.