Molto Bene Italian Eatery, the Italian restaurant in a house just around the corner from Rocky River to Lakewood, is easy to miss. But once you eat there, you’ll always find the unobtrusive sign on the building and think back on how good your experience was. For me, it started when a friend said, “We found this perfect place for pasta and gelato next door to Indian Gardens on Detroit Road, and you have to go there because everything is homemade and fresh.”
And so we went. The dining room feels cozy and inviting, with colors to delight the eye, in space that was once the living room and dining room of a house. We were welcomed warmly by staff and owners who run it with great passion for classic and contemporary Italian food, all made fresh daily. You have to take your own wine, but that’s one of the reasons this restaurant is so special — you can have a four-course meal and receive a check for only $50. And if you run out of wine, you can go across the street and get some more.
Let me tell you about this food. There’s bread and flavorful oil on the table when you arrive. The bruschetta topped with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and basil, made so the sauce doesn’t sink into and soak the bread. The margherita flatbread (le pizze) has just the right amount of crispiness on the bottom. Arancini (rice balls filled with asiago cheese) was tasty and satisfying. The Caesar salad was crisp and cool with just the right amount of dressing and shaved parmigiano.
Some of the pasta creations are unusual, like the salmon with pistachios in a white sauce on linguini and the spaghetti al fruito di mare with seafood and Pomodoro sauce. You’ll also find lobster ravioli for only $19 and tortellini with pancetta and broccoli for $16, as well as eggplant parmesan with penne pasta and cioppino of seafood and fish in an herbed tomato and wine broth with toasted bread. The spicy sauce on the Pollo a la Lucchese is enlivened by capers. Everything, including the pastas and the sauces, are made fresh in the kitchen every day.
Dessert is special. Crème brulee, tiramisu, lemon cake and raspberry cheesecake Tartufo are European standouts that appear on the menu. But the gelato is what you want to order. The night we dined there with friends, we all enjoyed award-winning GelatoStar gelato for dessert; the amaretto was amazing, and it’s apparently the most popular. I didn’t realize I was talking to a gelato master until owner Gonzalo Egozcue told me he owns GelatoStar and “making gelato, that’s what I do.” He comes from a family of gelato makers and has been making it for forty years. In fact, he arrived in Cleveland in the winter of 2003 as a gelato chef to make gelato in an Italian-American company on the east side of Cleveland, and worked there until mid-2010 when he moved to Florida for “the gelato season,” only to return and open GelatoStar in 2011.
The restaurant opened in August 2017 after a nine-month renovation and a year in which Egozcue and his wife Liliana looked for a restaurant to call their own. When I spoke with the couple in the restaurant in March, I was impressed by their generosity of spirit and their obvious closeness as a couple. Gonzalo likes to be in the kitchen, part of the action, checking out what’s going on, and Liliana is a hostess who serves their guests — she was, in fact, the one who brought our meals to us on our first visit.
Expect to find butcher-block tables, comfortable dining chairs, a hardwood floor and light from the large windows that are mostly undraped. The gelato is displayed in a case in front of the kitchen near a chalkboard with a drawing of an ice cream cone and a “Welcome” greeting with “Life Is Short, Eat Dessert First.” Some exposed brick provides ceiling support.
Italian Gonzalo grew up in Uruguay, and Liliano is from Colombia, but their love for Italian food is clear in the care they’ve put into the restaurant. Italian neighborhoods exist in South America just as they do in Norte America. Their goal: “We want everyone who comes here to leave happy.”
The menu changes about three times a year. The spring/summer menu will feature trout, probably in parchment. Customers return again and again, many of them from the surrounding neighborhood. On weekends, the restaurant serves 100 people from the small kitchen run by Chef Vincenzo Piazza. Vincenzo hails from Lucca, and his wife visited the restaurant the day I was there for the interview — he and Gonzalo are old friends. Because the food is always fresh, the restaurant shops for food several times a week. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations, which can be a challenge for food supply.
The restaurant is working on getting a liquor license and will soon put in an outside patio. It’s evolving. Right now, it’s a neighborhood treasure; one day it may be a local star. The restaurant is open for dinner every night but Monday because, Liliana says, “We need space for ourselves.” Molto Bene’s food is authentic and inspired, the space is inviting, and it draws in good people from the neighborhood to have fun times. Find it at 18401 Detroit Road, Lakewood.
Claudia Taller contributes to Cool Cleveland show possibilities for a bigger life. Find out about her books (including the novel Daffodils and Fireflies) and Igniting Possibilities events at http://claudiajtaller.com.
Lakewood, OH 44107