You Gotta Eat: Bella Luna

Wine me, dine me: Bella Luna is a haven of warmth and hearty food

Dave Surratt

Hospitaliano! No, no. Bella Luna is a much better trip than that, thanks to chef Marco Porceddu, who bought the place about a year ago. This is Northern Italian fare, so I pretended I was in a snowy Alpine villa (near where they found that 5,000-year-old Bronze Age guy sometime back) and stumbled in. It was an easier vision than it should have been, because it was snowing like all get-out at Sahara and Buffalo around lunchtime last Friday and I really was spazzing in the parking lot slush.

Fellow travelers, the things I saw within that toasted interior! Hyperchromatic expressionist art-splashes on the walls. Ivory-skinned statuary, lithe and musical in tasteful plastered alcoves. Soothing wall sconces of a cornflower hue. The heedless conversation of fortunate souls who feasted at linen-covered tables. And the ceiling! From it hung blue and gold orbs of disparate sizes and heights, like the digitally rendered allergy-causing molecules of an antihistamine commercial.

Perhaps it was from the reeling of my other senses, but the mixed greens with poached pears, Gorgonzola cheese and candied walnuts in honey vinaigrette ($7) was the best creation of its ilk I've tasted this century. The cheese was not overpowering--several diced bits of it were the perfect complement to the rest. At my white-knuckled hand: a hearty glass of Chianti Colli Sensesi ($9) that warmed away the outside chill. Thirteen other robust soups, salads and appetizers grace the lunch menu, from the most light and basic (mozzarella and tomato with basil, $8) to the weightier selections (classic Italian antipasto with imported cured meats, roasted peppers, olives and aged cheese, $10).

Service was prompt and the server dutiful beyond reproach, even garnishing my entree with well-wishes of "bon appetit" (said in an Italian accent). The linguine with shrimp, zucchini, garlic and olive oil ($12) was a buttery joy, as I would imagine are all these entrees, such as the rigatoni in pink sauce with proscuitto and peas ($10) or the spaghetti carbonara ($9).

Of course, there are coffees and sweets to be had. There is the signature Bella Luna cake ($6.50)--an orange, Grand Marnier and ricotta cheese wonder. There is tiramisu, there is creme brulee. There are gelati. I made the long journey home in snow, full as the winter moon and somehow escaping annihilation by any of the thousand hulking, feebly-helmed SUVs of that breathtaking terrain.