Bravo Papa!

On the eve of our decision to begin turning our delicious dinners together into amateur Phantom Gourmet expeditions, we stumbled upon the Mecca. The Holy Grail. The lost city of Atlantis. The looks darting across the table were ones of awe and disbelief. Could it really be that a place does exist where the meat sauce alone is enough to make Michael Lentini actually cry?

The night began as many others do: empty stomachs, Lentini in the trunk, and 40-minute waits at every respectable restaurant in town. While the buffalo tenders at Lat might have been sufficient for most of us, James wasn't having it. He whipped out his military grade cell phone and dialed 411.

Casa de Lucca (http://www.casadeluccarestaurant.com/) is a small family run eatery in Beverly, MA. James and I went a few years ago with my parents after watching one of my brother's hockey games in Salem. We remembered it being pretty good, and attempted to take everyone there last weekend for Emily's birthday. When we arrived, there was hardly enough room for us to fit inside the door, but the smell wafting out through the cracks was hypnotizing. We pushed through the crowd, grabbed seats at the bar and were torn between whether or not to wait it out or try our luck somewhere else. There wasn't an employee in sight, let alone a hostess to tame the increasingly angry mob of hungry Italians. A family who had been waiting there for about 40 minutes wrote a note on the hostess' pad of paper saying their party was leaving and that they received the worst service imaginable. While they were on their way out, James asked where they were heading and they told us to another place down the street. Since we weren't any closer to getting a table than we were when we first walked in, we decided to follow the crowd and venture onto more promising prospects. While the dinner we did end up having wasn't horrible, the service and ambiance were atrocious. A waitress spilled water all over our bruschetta (and Emily!) and did not offer to replace it, the waitress neglected to ask everyone (minus James) what kind of pasta they wanted so everyone got potatoes (at an Italian restaurant?!), and they had this crazy Lilith Fair tribute band playing throughout the entire duration of our meal.

Anyway, back to the story at hand. James dialed 411 and got the number for Casa de Lucca. Since the restaurant is about a 15-minute drive from Gloucester, we decided we could call ahead and by the time we arrived there might be a table for us. At that exact moment however, the universe shifted a little bit and the stars above us arranged themselves into a perfect, linguine shaped line. There was no wait. There were no angry note-leaving Italians in the doorway. They could feed us right away.

We filed back into the car, shut Lentini into the trunk with our ski boots, and headed up the highway. 15 minutes and the Thong Song later, we arrived and Carlos danced a jig all the way to the door. If we had been more perceptive, we might have considered the fact that finding a perfect parking spot directly outside of the restaurant was mere foreshadowing of the perfection awaiting us. The smell hit us as soon as we walked in. The kind of smell that takes you back to your grandmother's faux brick walled kitchen as a child, or one that you might smell if confronted with Professor Slughorn's love potion (for those living under rocks, the potion smells differently to each individual depending on what most attracts them). It honestly was like a scene in a perfectly scripted sitcom; the hostess came over and asked if we were the party who called ahead, we all said yes, and as she turned to bring us to our table we spotted a framed photograph of a little girl directly above the hostess stand. Carlos' eyes began darting between the picture and the hostess. The picture. The hostess. The picture. The hostess. It was her, however instead of missing teeth and pig tails, she donned an apron and a welcoming smile. That's when it hit us: this place was the real deal; real Italian food made by a real Italian family. Our hearts began to race with excitement as we took our seats.

(Side note: from this point on I deeply apologize for the over usage of the word delicious.)

We began the meal by ordering two bottles of wine, a Chianti and a Cabernet/Merlot. We toasted to "Doing it all over again", since being there felt like such de ja vu, but I'm pretty sure we couldn't have been more wrong. It's impossible to be doing it all over again when you're experiencing such pleasure for the first time. Our waitress then brought over the most delicious garlic bread sticks any of us have ever had, along with a bottle of olive oil for dipping/drenching said bread. We started examining our menus in between bites and grunts of rhapsody. The main consensus was to either get the Tour of Italy (ravioli in marinara, linguine alfredo, AND chicken parmigiana) or the Southern Italy (eggplant parmigiana, linguine bolognese, AND lasagna), being that both options allowed us to not have to choose just one meal (pfffff). There honestly was no wrong or bad choice on the menu, so it is impossible to imagine the pained looks on our faces when it actually came time to order.

The waitress began with Emily, who had decided on the Tour of Italy. The visions of alfredo dancing through her head were far too strong for her to resist. I then ordered the Vitello alla Parmagiana (veal parm), followed by Terry's Mussels alla Marinara and James' Tour of Italy (with veal parm instead of chicken). Now this is where things got interesting. It is a well known fact that it is (nearly) impossible for Lentini to order something if another person at the table has already ordered it, which is why he likes to order last. Being that he was going to have to order right before Carlos, that crazy trickster, he was immensely secretive during our post-ordering analyses. He totally hit one out to left field when he announced to the waitress (who he was completely eye f*cking by the way) that he'd have the lasagna. While we were all exchanging surprised looks, the waitress asked, "With the regular marinara or the meat sauce?" Tini looked at her like she had six heads and a hunchback and said, "The meat sauce, of course." Carlos rounded up the line up with the Pollo alla Parmagiana, although we were all completely banking on him to throw Tini for a loop and order the lasagna. Apparently Carlos wasn't game for putting his delicious dinner on the line just to mess with Tini's head. He was clearly playing for keeps.

The next order of business was the salad. Some might compare Casa de Lucca's unlimited salad and bread sticks to that of the Olive Garden's, but to do so would be an injustice. The salad came out in a family style bowl, and we were all invited to help ourselves to a heaping portion of greens. The mountainous salad was deliciously chilled with a summit of the sweetest red onions imaginable. The dressing was a tangy vinaigrette that would put any mass produced Olive Garden dressing to shame. An unexpected bonus was that for those in our party that preferred to not have salad, they were offered a homemade soup instead at no extra cost. Lentini and Emily enjoyed a deliciously concocted Vegetable Barley soup that went great with the wine, and even more wonderfully with the warm, garlicky bread sticks.

Although the waitress did not offer to refill our salad bowl, looking back I consider it a favor. She cleared our salad plates and soup bowls and began to present us with our entrees. Every dish that she placed on the table was met with applause and an echo of "Ooohhhss" and "Aaaahhsss". The fragrant steam hovering above the sauces and meats and pastas were enough to make us all collapse from over stimulation. Emily and James' Tour of Italy entrees were served on platters (not plates) that were each large enough to feed a party of at least 4 people. Terry's pasta was covered in so many fresh, garlicky mussels, it was impossible for all of us to resist trying one. Mine and Carlos' veal and chicken parmesan dishes were so large that the meat and the pasta each had to be served on two separate plates. And finally Tini was given his enormous brick of lasagna absolutely covered in meat sauce. He took one bite of the lasagna, gave us all a blank expression, dropped his fork, picked up his spoon, and started shoveling mouthfuls of sauce and meat into his mouth. His eyes began to twinkle, his expression had a softness about it the likes of which none of us had seen before. His heart was so touched by the 50-50 ratio of meat to sauce that it positively rendered him speechless. Believe me when I say that it was the first time any of us had seen him so inspired, so head over heels in love with an Italian food that was not made by him or a member of his incredibly Italian family.

None of us finished our meals. It was the first time in our history that every single one of us brought home leftovers. The evening ended with Lentini making eyes at and inappropriate comments to our waitress (expected), Emily declining dessert (completely unexpected), and all of us deciding to start grading our meals from here on out. We realized that since we all love going out to eat with one another, we might as well chronicle our various food journeys for our own pleasure and future reference. We then developed the "Five Nom" grading scale, with One Nom being horrible and Five Noms being, well, Casa de Lucca. It's a little unfair really to think that the first night of our grading system resulted in the highest of holy honors, but you know, I think that's the way it was supposed to happen. It takes being truly inspired by something to be jolted into action, and I for one am thankful that it was Casa de Lucca that had the power to do it.