<table border="0" align="right" width="310"><tr><td><img src="http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/tuscany.jpg" border="1" align="right"></td></tr><tr><td>Tuscany Italian Restaurant dramatically exceeded expectations for shopping-center dining. The chef, a native of Mexico, has lived and cooked in Italy, and it shows. Photo by Robin Garr.</td></tr></table>LEO's Eat 'n' Blog with Louisville HotBytes
(Tuscany Italian Restaurant, Charlestown Pizza Co.)
Some days I feel like authentic Italian cuisine, and nothing but the real thing will do. Some days a plate of spaghetti and meatballs seems just right. Happily, our city offers a few good options for the authentic stuff (<b>Primo</b> and <b>Volare</b> top my list), and we're practically awash in eateries (with <b>Melillo's</b> leading the pack) where you can fill up with hearty, red-sauced Italian-immigrant cuisine. Not to mention pizza.
Food snobs may diss the long-simmered, garlicky tomato-sauced stuff as inauthentic, but who doesn't love it? Still deeply rooted in the peasant cuisine of Sicily and Calabria in Southern Italy from where so many Americans came, it has become comfort food for us all, never mind whether we have a vowel on the end of our name.
This week we travel to opposite ends of the metro region to check out two worthy recent additions. We've been up the river a piece in Indiana to find excellent pizza and intriguing beers at Charlestown Pizza Company, and out into the South End to discover heart-warming comfort food with a hint of a south-of-the-border accent at Tuscany Italian.
I've unburdened an occasional rant about the abuse of the geographical term "Tuscany" as a trendy synonym for "Italian," even in institutions that have no discernible connection with Tuscany, the ancient region of Florence and Chianti. But this affectation seems innocently harmless at the just-opened <b>Tuscany Italian Restaurant</b>, out beyond Iroquois Park in a giant shopping center (big enough to house both a Big K and a Wal-Mart) at the corner of New Cut Road and Outer Loop.
Full reports in LEO and on LouisvilleHotBytes.