When I walked into Buon Gusto Ristorante, an old school red sauce restaurant in a modern mall in Mission Hills, the first thing I heard was a Dean Martin classic, “That’s Amore.”
Two thoughts occurred to me: First, that it’s been a really long time since I’ve heard that song. And, second, it was quiet enough in Buon Gusto to actually hear the music. Noisy restaurants are one of the plagues of our age. I’ve been in hot spots that were so noisy, I’ve moved to the outdoor patio — and even the patio is noisy.
But at Buon Gusto, you can hear the music, and you can hear conversations. You can hear the servers explaining the dishes, though not much explanation is called for. This is the red sauce cooking most of us have been eating all our lives — including classics like lasagna heavy with cheese, chicken parmesan with a thick crust, cheese ravioli and, of course, spaghetti with meatballs. This isn’t so much a restaurant, as a journey down a very tasty memory lane.
Everything comes full circle. And that circle has returned to the delicious world of red sauce, with restaurants like Funke and La Dolce Vita in Beverly Hills, Donnas in Silver Lake, and Sunday Gravy in Inglewood unexpectedly turning into the hottest tickets in town, with reservations that are nigh on impossible to score.
Trends come and go, but it’s not often that a trend from yesteryear becomes a trend of today. When it comes to classic Italian cooking, we embrace the joys of scampi, the wonders of sausage and peppers.
And to go with that, a welcome return to the happy days of the legendary Italian-American singers of yesteryear. Not just Dean Martin, but also (of course) Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Julius La Rosa, Al Martino — the list is long, and the songs are jammed with memories. The sound of Como crooning “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes” brings me back to night at Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, my local Little Italy, where there was cheese on…
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