Try Gambardella's For Fabulous Lasagna

Restaurant review

Gambardella's Pasta Bella, 1313 W. Meeker St., Kent; 859-4681. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday, open until 10 p.m., Saturday, 5-10 p.m., Sunday, 5-9 p.m. Major credit cards accepted. Wheelchair accessible. Beer, wine. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Attention, lasagna lovers: clip this review and save it. Your long search is over - Gambardella's Pasta Bella in Kent makes the best lasagna you could hope to find.

The texture is perfect - nine layers of soft, but not squishy, fresh homemade pasta - and the flavors are subtle and delicate: a wonderful blend of five cheeses (mozzarella, Romano, ricotta, kasser and asiago and great homemade Italian sausage, covered with a rich, complex marinara sauce.

This is not your mother's lasagna - it's the mother of all lasagnas.

Matt and Alice Gambardella - he's a native of Amalfi, she's from Calabria - opened Pasta Bella in 1991 and modeled it on their successful restaurant in Fairbanks, Alaska. Before feeding pipeline employees, the two ran an Italian restaurant in New Haven, Conn. Partner-chef Hugh Golden managed and cooked at Italian restaurants in Manhattan and in Washington, D.C. Any recipe on the menu that isn't one of theirs probably comes from Matt's mother in Genoa.

Golden makes all the pasta - rolled out fresh in the kitchen daily - as well as the restaurant's two kinds of sausage, a crusty and chewy peasant bread, a spicy minestrone, and sinfully rich cheesecakes and spumoni.

Located in a shopping center, Gambardella's attempts to overcome the strip-mall atmosphere with an interior decor emphasizing ferns atop short, Roman-column pedestals and a charming trellis bower of purple wisteria blooms. Operatic wailing (blessedly muted) issues from stereo speakers.

Pasta, chicken and pizza makes up most of the predominantly Southern Italian menu. If lasagna isn't your thing, try the excellent manicotti, a large pasta rolled around the same five cheeses and topped with marinara sauce ($10.25). Other pastas include a very good, al dente fettuccine Alfredo; chicken cannelloni; cheese ravioli; spaghetti; and angel-hair pasta with clams in wine sauce.

Appetizers - pizza bread, garlic bread, sausages or antipasti - are cheap, topping out at $3.95. Entree salads ($5.25-$6.50) are limited to Caesar salad, green salad, or a cold, marinated pasta salad. Pastas and main dishes are served with the homemade minestrone or a small salad.

The best chicken dish is the cacciatore, made either Northern-style (in a sherry wine sauce with mushrooms, onions and carrots) or Southern-style (stewed in a red sauce with olives, sweet peppers and capers), both $10.95. The breaded chicken parmigiano ($10.50) is huge, thick and covered with mozzarella and marinara. Other main dishes include a diced chicken Alfredo and a seafood pasta with shrimp, calamari, mussels and clams ($12.95).

Gambardella's thin, chewy Neapolitan pizza is distinctively different. Small sizes cost from $4.95 to $6.50, large sizes are $12.50 to $14.95. If you're tired of local pizzas smothered in tomato sauce, try the garlicky Roma pizza, with fresh tomato slices, basil and mushrooms over a pesto sauce, covered with mozzarella and crumbled Romano.

Desserts (all surprisingly inexpensive) include the luscious cheesecakes (New York, Italian or chocolate), cannoli, spumoni and tiramisu, along with various specials baked fresh daily.