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| Forgot my camera, so no photos of the new Luigi's D'Italia--you'll have to see the restaurant yourself... |
For 30 years, Luigi's D'Italia was the place you went when you wanted slops of good Italian food--but that was it. You didn't take a first date there, but rather the girl who already knew all your bad eating habits and wouldn't cringe too much when the spaghetti inevitably swung into your shirt. Most likely, you took your guys or family to twirl through mountains of pastas, pizzas as large as basketball hoops, baskets of bread that filled you up so much you either had to take most of your meal home or get fat trying to eat it all in one sitting--and guess what most of us did?
It was a classic, it was beloved--and no one took it seriously.
There was nothing that made Luigi's stand out from the other Italian restaurants in Orange County, not even the Italian-American ones, and honestly, I stopped going after a lifetime of patronage as a proud Anaheimer once I discovered
Rufino's on the other side of town. I just assumed Luigi's would always be there, just like its little weekly ad in the parish bulletin for St. Boniface (which I remember since I was a kid), and eventually disappear as its clientele died off or discovered better places.
But an ambitious reclamation project is currently underway at Luigi's,
thanks to the impetus of Gordon Ramsay. Somebody narcced on Luigi's to the tempestuous chef, because he set up shop this past week to devote an episode of his FOX
Kitchen Nightmares series to save the restaurant and make it relevant again. The show invited the chica and I to try the revamped Luigi's--I'll focus on the Ramsay angle come October, once the show airs (and you know we're going to devote like a million blog posts to
that), but right now: the new Luigi's, a place to finally visit for the food, a place that can combine the best of Cortina's and Onotria if it stays on its new track.
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