Just about everybody in Louisville talks about how much we enjoy good old-fashioned Italian-American comfort food, pasta loaded with tomato sauce with garlic bread on the side and gulps of rustic red wine to wash it all down.It’s a funny thing, though: As much as we proclaim our love for spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, manicotti and more, we don’t seem to do a good job of supporting the friendly folks who try to feed us this hearty “roots” fare.
Ferd Grisanti? Gone. Melillo’s? Departed. Ray Parrella’s? So long. Thinking aloud, and excluding pizzerias, more upscale northern Italian eateries and national chains, about the only family-Italian restaurant that’s hung on for the long haul is Come Back Inn with its Chicago-style immigrant fare.
Now, however, a new and demonstrably Italian-family eatery has come along, taking over the historic premises vacated when Ray Parrella’s closed after a six-year run last winter. DiFabio’s Casapela is now comfortably situated in one of the city’s oldest buildings, the smallish brick structure that was originally a toll house along the old Frankfort Pike nearly 200 years ago.
DiFabio’s is already a fixture in Madisonville, Ky., where Peter and Laura DiFabio have been serving up their Italian cuisine since 1995. Now their daughters, Caitlind and Sarah, are carrying on the family tradition with a second property in Louisville. The name “Casapela,” by the way, is a combination of the first letter of the family’s first names — Caitlind, Peter, Sarah and Laura, gently pushed together into an Italian-sounding moniker.
Caitlind, who presides amiably over the front of the house, has experience as a bartender at Proof on Main. Sarah, a Sullivan University culinary grad who was chef at Intermezzo in Actors Theatre of Louisville, is chef at DiFabio’s, where she’s joined by Chef Tim Yunker, also from Intermezzo.
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes:
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/difab ... mfort-fare
and in LEO:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/difabio%E2% ... mfort-fare
DiFabio’s Casapela
2311 Frankfort Ave.
891-0411
http://www.difabios.com
Robin Garr’s rating: 82 points