Italian

W hen the Bicycle in South Baltimore closed abruptly this summer, people wondered why the owners, Nicholas and Saundra Batey, continued to work on, and planned to open, another restaurant nearby. The new place would be an Italian restaurant called Ullswater (554 E. Fort Ave., 443-563-1620); and when I heard it had finally opened a couple of weeks ago, I called to find out more. Saundra Batey explained that the couple had bought the Ullswater building, where Sly Fox and Soigne had been, while Bicycle was still open; but they didn't own the fine-dining establishment.

Open only since last month, Luigi's Italian Deli in Hampden avoids any of the missteps that invariably are part of a new restaurant. Luigi's, and several of the small restaurants on 36th Street in Hampden, aka The Avenue, belie the old adage that patrons are reluctant to walk up stairs to a restaurant. At the top of these steps is a pleasant porch furnished with four tiny tables. Sipping a Blood Orange Pellegrino and tackling one of the specialty sandwiches makes scaling a few steps a small price to pay. There is also a spacious patio out back.

The colors of Italy dressed the Associated Italian American Charities' 54th annual dinner dance. The tables at Martin's West were covered in red, green and white, as were the Bali D'Italia Dancers, who performed Italian folk dances for a crowd of almost 800.Among the people decorating the party: Jay Matricciani, AIAC president; Judge Lawrence Daniels and Vince Piscopo, event co-chairs; Paul Russo, Anthony DiPaula and Tony Corbi, the evening's honorees; Guy...

Elizabeth McKenrick Winstead, an award-winning knitter and Bryn Mawr School graduate who established a scholarship fund there, died Tuesday of cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. She was 73. Mrs. Winstead, who went by the nickname Libby, was born in Baltimore in 1939. She was the eldest of three girls. Her father, a lawyer, served in the armed forces during World War II. During his absence, the girls and their mother moved to Pennsylvania to live with relatives. In early 1946, Mrs. Winstead's family returned to Baltimore, settling on North Charles Street near the city-county border.

It's Italian and it isn't. The new Josephine's at 2112 Fleet St. is a mid-range Italian restaurant, says owner-chef Ellen Davis; but specialties include a filet Chesapeake - tenderloin with crab and basil hollandaise - and a crab cake. If Angelina's (the Harford Road Italian restaurant famous for its crab cakes) comes to mind, that's not surprising. Davis has worked in its kitchen, as well as the now-closed Stella's in Hampden. As for the Italian food, it ranges from lasagna and meatballs to torta rustica, capellini with red bell pepper pesto and stuffed shells with ricotta, mozzarella and Gorgonzola.

Eight Italian women and men gathered last weekend to share stories about the old country and their present lives in the United States. Conversations in Italian about work, family, church and food flowed as freely as the espresso they sipped from tiny cups.Every other month since January, as many as 15 people have gathered at the Glen Burnie home of Lisa Pitocco to socialize in Italian -- and to eat and drink.Over the winter, Pitocco, 42, received a call from Sister Vera Green at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Glen Burnie.

Citicorp is considering the sale of its consumer branch-banking businesses in Italy and France as part of its efforts to trim assets and increase its financial strength, news reports and bankers say.A trade publication, American Banker, reported yesterday that Italian bankers said that the Citicorp subsidiary in Italy had not been formally offered for sale, but that Citicorp officials had indicated they would listen to offers.The Italian subsidiary specializes in consumer and small-business banking through a network of 52 branches.

My wife and I were out with another couple recently, and we were talking about ethnicity. We realized that if our friends had a daughter (half Jewish-half Irish) and we had a son (half Italian-half Jewish) who married, our grandchildren would be a mish-mash of cultures, practically deracinated and stripped of any real heritage.That may be true, I said, thumping my chest, but they would have my name. What that name might be worth, in the face of eroding European ethnic identity, is precisely what Bill Tonelli sets out to discover in his sociological picaresque, "The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America."

An ocean and a continent couldn't keep Paola Mainnetti, a 17-year-old Italian student, from 15-year-old Beth Carter.The two became instant friends in February while Beth, a sophomore from Severn High School, toured the schools and museums of Brescia, Italy, with her classmates as part of the Severn High Italian Exchange Program.Now Paola is touring the coffee shops and malls of Annapolis with Beth, the friend she calls "my sister."The exchange program is a "home-to-home, school-to-school partnership," said Doug Sassi, who coordinates the program with the Instituto Tecnico Commerciale Lunardi in Brescia.

At parades, festivals and family gatherings across the country, Columbus Day is as much a celebration of Italian-American culture as of the European discovery of the New World - a day when "everybody is Italian." Yet many people, including some Italian-Americans, may be surprised to learn that Italians and their culture were not accepted in the United States until relatively recently. When my maternal grandparents came to the United States from Italy in the early 1920s, Italians, who were one of the largest immigrant groups, were widely considered to be among the least desirable.

Luigi's Italian Deli opened Thursday in Hampden. It's on that block of front-porch businesses, just a few doors down from the Verandah. The owners are Jeanine and Ryan Little of Reisterstown. This is a counter operation, with some seating inside and outside on the porch. On the menu are specialty sandwiches like the Isabella with prosciutto di Parma, soppressata, dry-cured coppa, Asiago, green olive spread and tomato, and Luigi's Italian Cold Cut with mortadella, salame, capicollo, prosciuttini and provolone.

Most would agree that some cosmetic surgery can give us the proverbial new lease on life. It applies to people. It applies to restaurants. Aface-liftis just what Chris Infantino, the current owner of Tino's Italian Bistro, did when he acquired the storefront space formerly known as Strapazza. There wasn't much Infantino's interior designer could do about the building's facade, but inside you'll find a handsomely reconfigured upscale-looking restaurant/bistro/trattoria -- in the burnt sienna walls, the wrought-iron sculptures hung on them, the floor-to-ceiling wine rack that divides the two dining rooms.

Everybody loves free stuff. I don't. I hate waiting in lines. I'd rather pay. But if you don't mind waiting in lines, you should know that Rita's Italian Ice is celebrating the first day of spring by scooping free ice all day. All guests who visit their local Rita's Italian Ice will receive a free Regular Ice of their choice. This is the 20th year that Rita's has celebrated the first day of spring with the free ice promotion. Here are Rita's Italian Ice stores near you.

N ot so long ago, Italian, Chinese and Greek food were considered delicacies. Now they're take-out (and even chain restaurant) fodder, and Baltimore's international dining offerings have expanded to every continent, save Antarctica. (Perhaps that's coming soon.) Still, it's easy to stick with the standards instead of being adventurous and sampling cuisine from other corners of the world. So, we've picked five restaurants that not only make food from less-familiar parts, but also do it really well.

Raymond Akers of China Grove, N.C., is hoping someone can share a recipe for semi-spicy Italian meatballs for spaghetti. Surprisingly, I did not receive any recipe from readers, so I decided to do a little experimenting to come up with a good one. There is no shortage of meatball recipes to use as a starting point. I took what I thought were the best components of several recipes to develop this light, lean and slightly spicy meatball. It uses a combination of spicy sausage and lean ground beef, with the heat coming from the sausage and red pepper flakes.

Calle's Cucina is a place with potential. Chef-owner Carl "Calle" Vahl has the experience to run a show-stopping restaurant, with both formal and on-the-job training in Italy and New York. Philosophically, Vahl is in the right place, too. He uses fresh, local ingredients to create authentic Italian dishes and is committed to becoming an integral part of the Charles Village community. All great things. Unfortunately, both the food and the atmosphere at Calle's Cucina need some tweaking, and it's not completely clear where the restaurant falls on the casual-to-fine-dining scale.

Hundreds of Baltimoreans cheered marching bands, dignitaries and floats yesterday commemorating Christopher Columbus' journey to the Americas in the 1997 version of the nation's oldest consecutively held Columbus Day parade.Walking around the Inner Harbor under clear, sunny skies, Antonio Oyarzabal, the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and dozens of representatives from local Italian-American and Hispanic groups -- Columbus was Italian and Spain paid for his voyage in 1492 -- marked the day. of the first confirmed European landing in what became known as America.

DONA de Sanctis and I sat down in a quiet restaurant in northeast Washington and had a Catholic-on-Catholic discussion that started with a reference to that movie. Well, it was almost Catholic-on-Catholic. De Sanctis said her family converted to the Episcopal faith when she was a teen-ager. I'm a Catholic who has promised to find his way to Mass before the next time Halley's comet appears. But both of us know what the Stations of the Cross are, and their relevance to Mel Gibson's disputed but profitable The Passion of the Christ.

As a young man living in the Bronx, Chazz Palminteri would escape the city on long drives into the Westchester County countryside where he'd tool along curving, forested roads, staring at the set-back mansions. To a guy with empty pockets, the gated lawns and gabled rooflines looked like money, like class — like success. "Oh my God," he'd say to himself. "I want to be up here one day. " It may have taken decades, but Palminteri finally scored that Bedford, N.Y., address. These days, when Palminteri heads home, he drives along one of those woodsy roads, through one of those exclusive gates, and right up to his very own set-back mansion — a distinguished Georgian of rugged stone and stately gables.

Considering the extent to which art defines everyday life in Italy, it's not surprising that some Italians wanted to go out in style. That's an art-historical lesson imparted by the photography exhibit "A Legacy of Love: Italian Memorial Sculpture" at the University of Maryland Baltimore County's Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Photographers Robert W. Fichter and Robert Freidus collaborated on this documentary project shot at cemeteries in central and northern Italy. By photographing funerary monuments that were sculpted from marble between the early 19th century and the 1940s, they are able to show how different stylistic trends in the art world are reflected in this architectural world of the dead.