Italian Cuisine

Fragrant fennel is often said, unfairly, to taste like licorice. In fact the taste is light and delicate, elusive rather than persistent, and a perfect complement to salads, soups and stews.Fennel is closely associated with Italian cuisine and, according to Elizabeth Schneider's "Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables, A Commonsense Guide," ancient Romans used fennel to season pork, lamb, seafood and beans. Modern Italians still make a fennel and pork sausage. Fennel is available from early fall through late spring.

The old Cafe Troia space in Towson is now a new Italian restaurant named Taste Mediterranean Grille . The chef here, Luigi Palumbo, recently moved to the area with his family from his hometown in Bacoli, Naples, where he ran a restaurant named Ristorante a Ridosso ; Taste is his first venture in the United States. Most of what I know about the chef and the new restaurant comes from Rafael Coppola, a longtime fixture on the Baltimore dining scene who was brought in by the restaurant's ownership group to help Palumbo translate the Neapolitan dining experience for the American suburbs.

Watertown, Mass. -- Ask Margaret and Franco Romagnoli about America's love affair with Italian food and they'll say it's good -- and bad.Good, because their favorite cuisine is now one of America's favorites. Bad, because America's idea of Italian food is a little, well, overdone.Mr. Romagnoli refers to it as his "car-fin theory." Like the cars that sported tail fins in the 1950s, "Italian cooking now has become so faddish," he says, with people adding extras."We've been terribly conscious of authenticity," says Ms. Romagnoli, while being interviewed with her husband at their home.

Greg Orendorff, the owner and operator of Luigi Petti in Little Italy for 16 years, has closed down the cozy bistro and opened a restaurant in Arbutus, closer to his home. Like Luigi Petti, Gianni's, which opened about a year ago, offers red-sauce favorites like homemade lasagna and ravioli. And like Luigi Petti, known as one of Little Italy's more reasonably priced destinations, Gianni's gives customers a lot of food for their money. -- Poor:]

Take your children around the globe with a short trip to Anne Arundel County Community College this weekend for the Chesapeake Children's Museum Rhythms of the World Festival.Introduce the youngsters to Italian cuisine, El Salvadoran and Japanese fashion, Irish folk tales and Indian crafts at the college in Arnold. There also will be dance with the Anne Arundel Community College Dance Company, games and a silent auction.The festival runs from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday at the cafeteria. Admission is $5 in advance, $6 at the door.

When That's Amore opened last November, the market for an upscale, family-style Italian restaurant was wide open in downtown Columbia.The Tomato Palace, nestled on Lake Kittamaqundi next to the ever-popular Clyde's of Georgetown, has an audience that appreciated its laid-back ambience and pizza and pasta specialties.And with Piccolo's -- another popular Italian restaurant -- a few miles away, Columbia seemed about as far from Naples, Italy, as any place could be.That's Amore's -- across the street from The Mall in Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion -- is the sixth location for the Rockville-based chain.

New York -- Giuliano Bugialli is a man with a mission. He wants to teach Americans to cook Italian -- that is, real Italian, with its own working styles and characteristic ingredients."

Pecoraro's offers authentic, but not too fancy, Italian cuisine. Although surrounded by U.S. 1's dated roadside motels, the restaurant, which opened in 1983, stands in stark contrast: safe and clean, suitable for families, wholesome atmosphere - and it offers food to match. On any evening, a number of families can be found eating - or waiting to eat - in the restaurant. "The restaurant business is really a people business," says Nick Pecoraro, the owner. "The loyalty of our customers over the 19 years has meant a lot to us."

Thousands of local Italian-Americans - and those who maybe just enjoy gelato, pizza and spicy sausage - gathered yesterday to celebrate the return of the Towson Italian Festival, an event that was last held in the Baltimore County seat about 20 years ago. None of this year's organizers, members of the Towson Dulaney Lodge of the Order Sons of Italy, could explain or even remember why the charitable event fizzled out sometime in the 1980s, but they are...

Listen up, Yanks. You're still not getting it. Some 24 years after noted cooking teacher and cookbook author Marcella Hazan sat down to explain the essentials of Italian cooking, you are still over-saucing the pasta and over-using ingredients meant be flavor notes. And, by the way, you are now under-cooking the spaghetti.Americans have learned a lot about Italian cuisine in the past two dozen years, Hazan said recently after a luncheon at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where she was battling both a cold and a grueling 16-city tour promoting her new book.

Thousands of local Italian-Americans - and those who maybe just enjoy gelato, pizza and spicy sausage - gathered yesterday to celebrate the return of the Towson Italian Festival, an event that was last held in the Baltimore County seat about 20 years ago. None of this year's organizers, members of the Towson Dulaney Lodge of the Order Sons of Italy, could explain or even remember why the charitable event fizzled out sometime in the 1980s, but they are...

Ahh ... the pleasures of dining out - someone to wait on you instead of you doing the honors. Great food to please your palate. And best of all, no dishes to wash. If you live in Harford County, there is a vast array of restaurants offering delicious delicacies. From Northern Italian cuisine to Maryland crab cakes to big, beefy hamburgers, restaurants throughout the county have something to satisfy the most discriminating taste. In historic Havre de Grace, along the beautiful, serene Susquehanna River, sits the Tidewater Grille.

Pecoraro's offers authentic, but not too fancy, Italian cuisine. Although surrounded by U.S. 1's dated roadside motels, the restaurant, which opened in 1983, stands in stark contrast: safe and clean, suitable for families, wholesome atmosphere - and it offers food to match. On any evening, a number of families can be found eating - or waiting to eat - in the restaurant. "The restaurant business is really a people business," says Nick Pecoraro, the owner. "The loyalty of our customers over the 19 years has meant a lot to us."

When That's Amore opened last November, the market for an upscale, family-style Italian restaurant was wide open in downtown Columbia.The Tomato Palace, nestled on Lake Kittamaqundi next to the ever-popular Clyde's of Georgetown, has an audience that appreciated its laid-back ambience and pizza and pasta specialties.And with Piccolo's -- another popular Italian restaurant -- a few miles away, Columbia seemed about as far from Naples, Italy, as any place could be.That's Amore's -- across the street from The Mall in Columbia and Merriweather Post Pavilion -- is the sixth location for the Rockville-based chain.

Near where we were seated in the Brass Elephant's main dining room, a couple were getting engaged. There was barely room enough on their table for the enormous bouquet of red roses. He was wearing a tux. The waiter wheeled out a cart with a bottle of champagne and a whole chocolate cake for two (my kind of proposal), and pretty soon she was flashing an enormous diamond ring.I can't imagine a more romantic place to get engaged; and if their meal was as good as ours, they must have been doubly happy.

Take your children around the globe with a short trip to Anne Arundel County Community College this weekend for the Chesapeake Children's Museum Rhythms of the World Festival.Introduce the youngsters to Italian cuisine, El Salvadoran and Japanese fashion, Irish folk tales and Indian crafts at the college in Arnold. There also will be dance with the Anne Arundel Community College Dance Company, games and a silent auction.The festival runs from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday at the cafeteria. Admission is $5 in advance, $6 at the door.

Ahh ... the pleasures of dining out - someone to wait on you instead of you doing the honors. Great food to please your palate. And best of all, no dishes to wash. If you live in Harford County, there is a vast array of restaurants offering delicious delicacies. From Northern Italian cuisine to Maryland crab cakes to big, beefy hamburgers, restaurants throughout the county have something to satisfy the most discriminating taste. In historic Havre de Grace, along the beautiful, serene Susquehanna River, sits the Tidewater Grille.

Listen up, Yanks. You're still not getting it. Some 24 years after noted cooking teacher and cookbook author Marcella Hazan sat down to explain the essentials of Italian cooking, you are still over-saucing the pasta and over-using ingredients meant be flavor notes. And, by the way, you are now under-cooking the spaghetti.Americans have learned a lot about Italian cuisine in the past two dozen years, Hazan said recently after a luncheon at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where she was battling both a cold and a grueling 16-city tour promoting her new book.

He started in the kitchen as a dishwasher, when he was 14. At 15, he became a cook, and at 16 a restaurant manager. At 25 or so, he began to think of himself as a chef. Now, at 45, he is an accomplished chef who is soon to be a restaurateur. You could say he did everything the old-fashioned way, but Ed Rogers would probably just call it his way.Sitting in the intimate dining room at Raphael's in Little Italy on a crisp spring day, he reminisced about the early days in his career, and about his plans for the near future, which include a new restaurant venture in Mount Vernon.