Long Island Restaurants

Lucia

Somewhere between the crab cakes and the cavatelli, a tenor's voice reaches from kitchen to dining room. It's chef Richard Desmond, who knows about high notes.

His neighborhood restaurant hits plenty of them. Lucia lights up this stretch of East Jericho Turnpike with soulful Italian cooking. Desmond, formerly of Bliss in East Setauket, juices up the traditional with some creative updates.

Lucia takes over the site of Casa di Anthony's, a respectable eatery, the pizzeria of which continues to thrive next door. The easygoing decor remains, with sunny tones, dark wood and evocative black-and-white art of Italy. Service stays warm, welcoming and attentive.

Desmond's new approach begins with baked ricotta, essentially lasagna without pasta. It's a fist-size mound of fresh buffalo ricotta, oven-cooked, set on crostini, and capped with tomato relish. Husky enough to be shared, savory enough to be hoarded.

His variation on the salt-cod staple becomes "smoked salmon baccala," assertive and tasty, also on grilled bread. For a mellow beginning, consider the bright, asparagus-and-mushroom risotto, creamy with Parmesan and cut with lemon zest. Crab cakes are recommended, too: generous, accented with tarragon-horseradish sauce.

But baked clams arrive singed a bit too zealously, with a near-blackened coverlet; and pasta e fagioli seems tomatoed into the anonymity of countless versions.

Dinner improves with a salad of fried zucchini blossoms atop good greens, finished with an orange vinaigrette and pine-nut oil. The Caesar salad is better than most.

Desmond prepares a delicious cavatelli with chunky meat sauce, and an airy, smooth gnocchi Bolognese. A duet of cannelloni, which could feed four, is filled with vegetables and pork and covered with a Parmesan cheese-bechamel-truffle sauce that embodies excess.

Rigatoni Norma, a spin on the Sicilian mainstay, boasts aged ricotta, but it's undone by slightly bitter eggplant. Linguine with white clam sauce, however, underscores this course's claim to be Long Island's official dish. Spaghetti alla Richard, with broccoli, sausage and pesto, completed with a cap of bread crumbs, provides the competition.

Desmond sends out a bracing production of short ribs pizzaiola-style, in a tomato-red pepper sauce, on pea risotto. Just as fortifying is chicken Carmela, breaded and stuffed with ricotta and fontina cheese, on cavatelli with tomato sauce.

Scallops oreganata are limp and helped neither by Frangelico-thyme sauce nor mushy, bland caponata. You're better off with pignoli-crusted tilapia, spurred by caramelized melon relish, or with striped bass marechiaro, which doesn't need its accompanying linguini and overcooked shellfish.

Desserts are few. A lopsided strawberry Napoleon needs more sweetness and ripeness. Cheesecake with a crust suggesting crushed amaretti cookies and flourless chocolate cake redeem the finales.

But you're sure Desmond must have another aria working in the wings.

Reviewed by Peter M. Gianotti, 6/24/07.

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