First Look: BoccaLupo

• James Camp
• Crispy lasagna at BoccaLupo

There are few restaurants that I've liked as much as La Pietra Cucina, which opened about five years ago. (The restaurant closed briefly in 2012 and later reopened as LPC.) La Pietra's executive chef, Bruce Logue, was once sous chef at Mario Batali's Babbo in New York. Like Batali, Logue's overall inspiration is Italian, but he fiddles with classics by using American, often local ingredients. Call it Italian-American. Just don't think "New-York-style Italian" overdosed with tomato sauce and cheese.

I lunched frequently at La Pietra Cucina and Logue became my favorite chef in town. But the restaurant's look became bizarre. Originally, meals were served in a small and pleasant, sunny dining room off the restaurant's main room, which awaited remodeling. The redo seemed wrong in every way for Logue. It was gloomy, with terra-cotta walls and completely uninteresting paintings. It was far too large. Lunching there felt lonely. Prices made the restaurant a fine-dining venue - in the middle of the recession. Logue disliked the change immensely and long talked about opening a small, informal, and more affordable place of his own.

Continue reading "First Look: BoccaLupo" by Cliff Bostock