Gambardella's Keeps It Simple And Delicious

Jul 7, 1995

John Hinterberger

----------------------------------------------------------------- Restaurant review

XX Gambardella's Pasta Bella, 1313 W. Meeker St., Kent. ($) Lunch ($5 to $7) 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner ($7 to $13) 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; until 10 p.m. Friday, Saturday. Beer, wine. Major credit cards. No smoking. Reservations: (206) 859-4681. -----------------------------------------------------------------

How Gambardella's Pasta Bella got from my hometown, New Haven, Conn., to the Northwest took almost as long as I did.

Gambardella's is a typical East Coast, Southern Italian pasta house; inexpensive, generous and uncomplicated. If it can be made from semolina, sauced with tomatoes, adorned with meatballs and washed down with Chianti, they have it. If you are looking for elegant veal cuts sauced with expensive white wine, dressed with miniature vegetables and served by a guy in a tuxedo, look elsewhere.

The Gambardella family is all over New Haven. I went to high school with at least a dozen of them. They owned an Italian cheese company and, less than a mile from where I was born and raised, a major seaside restaurant called San Remo. My aunt's wedding reception was held there, hosted by the Gambardellas. We ate, among other things, wonderful homemade manicotti. Still have the pictures.

Matt and Alice Gambardella (he's from Amalfi; she's from Calabria) sold their holdings several years ago, and headed for

Alaska. He executive-cheffed for the pipeline as well as a restaurant-deli in Fairbanks. After a sidetrip to Saudi Arabia for a few years, they returned to the Northwest, reopened a Pasta Bella in Fairbanks, and in 1991 their latest place in Kent. It's run by son-in-law Hugh Golden and his wife (their daughter), Patrice.

Just like back home

I first became aware of them locally a couple of years ago when I bought a loaf of uncommonly decent Italian bread and some outrageous bread sticks at a custom Northend pasta shop, Noodles Gourmet Pasta Co. in North City. Owner Bill Thompson, from the Bronx, said it was baked by the Gambardellas in Kent, and if I wanted to taste some genuine back-home pizzas, I should go south.

It took a while, but I spent most of last week hanging around Kent's Meeker Square Mall, eating pizzas, slurping pastas and on some terribly hot evenings, drinking cool Chianti. Not wildly sophisticated, but civilized.

The Antipasto ($4.95 for one; $6.95 for two) is routine: assorted sliced meats, cheeses, olives and roasted red peppers over a bed of greens. A better choice would be to split one of the pizzas (around $8 for a nine-inch pie; $12 to $15 for the large 16-inch) and take home what you don't consume.

Their most popular pizza (but not their best) is the Milano, with homemade sausage, pepperoni, salami and mushrooms. Lighter, more subtle and truly fine is the Siena, a white pizza with spinach, olives, sliced Roma tomatoes, sliced homemade sausage and cheese.

A choice of soup or salad precedes any of the pasta or "Main Dishes." The salads are OK: greens, sliced red cabbage, shredded carrots, etc., but come in those brutally durable, tan Bakelite bowls. It's an unresolved prejudice, but they remind me of every cheap diner between Boston and Philly, and back-home or not, I hate them. You can't sabotage them; you can't break them. You can't even burn them. They will outlast everything on the planet.

The Minestrone ($1.95 a cup; $3.25 for a meal-sized bowl) is made fresh daily, loaded with vegetables and a variety of beans. It's almost too hearty for summertime eating, but tasty and deeply satisfying.

Lasagna's magnificent

The best dish in the place is, without question, the lasagna ($6.95 at lunch; $10.95 evenings). It's a magnificent concoction; nine layers of ultra-thin pasta sheets, fluffed up by four different cheeses: ricotta, kasseri,, romano and mozzarella, slices of hard-cooked egg and mild discs of sausage. A large square of it is set in a pool of marinara sauce, covered with melting, grated cheese and, imposing as it was, I was shocked when I ate all of it (my memories were of childhood and my mouth was on auto-pilot).

The Manicotti ($10.25) is filled with the same combination of cheeses, with the further addition of a medium-sharp asiago, and, like the lasagna, is topped with a red sauce.

You can't go wrong with the basic spaghetti and meatballs ($8.95). It's popular, filling and brought to mind a comment by one of the restaurant's regulars: "Nothing's extraordinary, but everything's always real good."

Nine pastas, four varieties of chicken, a quite good Eggplant Parmigiano, and a seafood Fra Diavlo (pasta with scallops, shrimp, calamari and mussels in a spicy red sauce) complete the menu.

Lots of Eastern-styled cheesecakes, a house-made spumoni, cannoli, tiramisu and a quite good Zuppa Inglese finish things off.