Lasagne @ Casa Italia
36 Stanley St, Liverpool, L1 6AL
Low-lit leatherette booths, penne in tangerine-hued vodka sauce, meatballs the size of your fist — there’s a new dining micro-trend and it’s the Italian-American restaurant.
Grasso in London, Louis in Manchester. On a recent trip to Cornwall I even spotted somewhere in Newquay, Rosa, serving ‘chicken parm’ specials and handsome plates of noodles with red sauce.
All good fun, but why are we importing this concept from across the Atlantic when we have our own rich heritage of Italian culinary fusion? There’s the gelato shops of Glasgow’s Byres Road, South Wales’ sadly dwindling Caffe Bracchi, greasy spoons like the venerable E Pellicci in East London.
And that’s before you get to Scouse-Italian restaurants.
Until slum clearance in the 1960s, Scotland Road was Liverpool’s own Little Italy, lined with cafes and ice cream parlours. These days things are a little more spread out.
Maranto’s on Lark Lane, Franco’s in Aintree, Don Luigi in Formby are all examples. Family-run, lively and boozy. Somewhere you can have a Big Night.
Bonus points if the menu features a few more eccentric items. Justino’s on Aigburth Road, now shut down, used to offer duck spring rolls among its antipasti. Now that’s Scouse-Italian.
Perhaps the most loved of these eateries is Casa Italia, opened in 1976 and barely changed since. Dark wood, candelabra light fixtures, giant mosaic of a sun-dappled piazza — it’s the neighbourhood Italian place from your mind’s eye (even if the check tablecloths are wipe clean nowadays).
The order here is always the same; lasagne. It arrives volcanically hot, carbonised at the edges. The sensible thing to do is wait. Instead you burn the roof of your mouth with a forkful of molten cheese and bechamel. Before long you’re into the guts of it — layers of pasta, rich meat ragu and sweet, salmon-pink tomato sauce.
Is it the best lasagne you’ll ever eat? It might not even be the best lasagne on Stanley Street. But what do you want? You can get satisfyingly massive slab, share a garlic bread and wash it down with a Moretti for less than £20.
In the Bronx they’d say fuggedaboudit, round here we’d just tell you to give your head a wobble.
