Restaurant Review:

Dining Out
By Mary Furr

Some people are easily recognized by a single name like Garbo or Madonna. Capone is one of those whose name conjures legends of 1925 Chicago, where life was in the fast lane and restaurants offered great Italian food like the authentic dishes found at Capone's Pasta & Pizza on Beach Boulevard and Utica Street in Newland Center, Huntington Beach It's a minimalist place with dark red wood tables, ladder-back chairs, a banquette along one wall and a great wood-burning oven behind a used brick counter with tall stools. From the stools, you can watch owner and chef Dino Ferraro cooking up a storm of sauces, pasta and pizza. From nearly a dozen appetizers, we chose brushetta with shrimp ($5.95), four oblong pieces of Italian bread covered with thick green pesto, crushed basil, pine nuts, garlic and olive oil topped with tail-on shrimp. The contrast of crunchy bread with the freshness of the shellfish was good, but perhaps a little more olive oil could have been used. If you want to eat and do business or take lunch on the run, you can do it here. Chicken picatta (lunch $6.25, dinner $11.95) has chicken pieces sauteed with artichoke hearts in a lemon caper sauce. It's piquant and zesty, without the usual tomato, served over a choice of pasta. Capelli d'angelo, slender angel hair, worked well with the sauce, light with plenty of pasta surface to cling to.

The excellent sauce is also served with veal (lunch $8.95, dinner $11.95) -- a large cut goes well with spaghetti, a thicker pasta more typical of Italian cuisine -- a good dinner selection. Another favorite is ravioli con spinachi (lunch $6.25, dinner $12.95), which can be dressed up in various ways. Here there are jumbo ricotta and goat cheese-filled pasta pockets with the spinach in the sauce instead of in the ravioli. Diced tomato, mushrooms and carrots also flavor the light white sauce. Served in a hot shallow dish, it is excellent. There's no need for the pepper mill offered by the pleasant and watchful server, Josh Martinez.

Entrees include an excellent dinner salad of mixed greens, diced tomato, carrot, celery, black olive and pepperoncini. The salad comes with an olive oil and wine vinegar dressing, homemade like everything else here, including the soft twisted hot rolls that are served instead of bread sticks. Chef Dino says they're silly and not bread at all. If you're ready to die and go to dessert heaven, order the tiramisu ($4.50) -- two layers of cake soaked in espresso and Kahlua, powdered with cocoa and served in a dark pool that is the very essence of chocolate.

Lunch offers five sandwich varieties ($6.50). One was made of sausage, green pepper, onions and tomato sauce and had a top crust sprinkled with cheese, resembling a turnover -- almost like a calzone.

What's Italian without pizza? At Capone's, the crust is thin and crisp -- Chef Dino says he loves the sound of the crust as he cuts the pizza when it's just out of the wood-burning oven. Small (6 slices) of Capone's special ($8.95) is mildly spicy with the crisp, barely cooked onions and bell peppers and the works -- ham, pepperoni, mushrooms, smoked bacon with garlic, olive oil and fresh basil. There are also white and green pizzas, Hawaiian, Thai and Greek, smoked salmon and vegetarian. Your choice.

Dino says he bases his menu on Sicilian family recipes refined by his training at the Boston Culinary School. He's worked in restaurants since he was 14, so add experience to his qualifications. Now if he'd just bring in some potted plants and get a tape of Chicago-style jazz to replace the modern stuff, he'd warm my interior decorator's heart.

* MARY FURR is the Independent restaurant critic. If you have comments or suggestions for her, call (562) 493-5062.

Go to Huntington Beach Independent to read actual article

back to Media