LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
DiFabio's cheese-stuffed tortellini special with spinach and basil butter.
Mmm, mmm, Tortellini! Who doesn't love these little stuffed pasta rings? Artfully rolled into small rounds, their Italian name stems from "torta," naming them as "little cakes," a moniker that doesn't actually make much sense since there's nothing very cake-like about them. If you want descriptive food words, try their alternative name, ombelico, a.k.a. "belly buttons."
You can make them at home, too, but it does take a while to make enough of the little fellers to feed even two people. Seriously, who'd spend all that time on such a finicky project when you can buy a box full of tortellini all ready to simmer?
That's how I'd do it, anyway, and I'm pretty sure the good folks at DiFabio's Casapela would, too. I didn't actually sneak into the kitchen and watch the chef open a box, but I'm pretty sure the pasta pockets in my pasta dish there the other night weren't individually hand-formed.
And I don't care, either, because this dish, cheese-stuffed tortellini with basil butter and spinach. ($13), was really good anyway.
DiFabio's landed in Louisville about six years ago, the urban outpost of a family Italian eatery in Madisonville, Ky. Fun old-country decor makes it look a little more Italian than Old Kentucky now, and the family's name is certainly Italian. "Casapela" sounds Italian, too, but don't try to look it up; it's actually a combination of the first letters of the family's first names - Caitlind, Peter, Sarah and Laura - whisked together into an Italian-sounding mashup.
It sits almost directly across the street from another popular Italian restaurant, Volare, but I don't see them as competitors. Each fills a different niche. Volare offers an upscale experience with Chef Josh Moore and crew turning out the kind of regional Italian dishes that we once called "Northern Italian." DiFabio's may be the city's most appetizing example of Italian-American family fare.
Grab a menu, tuck a napkin into your collar, and start planning your next visit. Just about all the iconic dishes are there. ...
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/?p=5482
See this column also in LEO Weekly:
http://www.leoweekly.com/2016/02/difabi ... mily-fare/
DiFabio's Casapela
2311 Frankfort Ave.
891-0411
http://difabios.com
Facebook: http://bit.ly/Casapela
Robin Garr's rating: 83 points