Joe Grisafi lifts the dome slowly, and white smoke billows from the plate, a cloud streaming upward like it’s searching for sky. What a dramatic entrance for the chicken Da Vinci entrée at Hellertown’s Taste of Italy—if the smoke doesn’t get your attention, the aroma will.
Grisafi, chef and operator, says eating at the BYOB restaurant is “not just dinner, it’s an experience,” and the chicken Da Vinci, among other dishes, certainly bears that out. The experience of dining is the modus operandi that forms the foundation of this Italian American eatery. Food plays to all the senses with visual appeal, bold flavor profiles and mouthwatering aromas.
Visual appeal carries over into the restaurant’s décor. Grisafi took three months to renovate the space—previously home to the Italian eateries Bella’s, then Ella’s—before opening Taste of Italy in May. The result is a comfortable and casual sensibility that fits well with the traditional family orientation associated with restaurants that serve pasta with red sauce.
Outside, the sharp-looking black-and-white trim around large windows gives the restaurant a contemporary, clean look that’s classy and inviting. Large Roman-looking statues in the windows suggest the cuisine found within.
The airy lobby carries the outside in with its white walls and black trim, finished with new black-and-white tile on the floor. Black tablecloths, black napkins and black soda-fountain chairs finish the picture, calling up images of The Godfather.
The main dining area, in Art Deco décor with lights in that style and a master collection of Michael Godard limited edition prints exhibited on the walls, is the restaurant’s core. Additionally, three private party rooms can host from 26–65 people. A patio behind the restaurant offers dining next to a stream. Yes, in the middle of Hellertown!
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The cuisine is classic old-school Italian American, as Grisafi describes it. Well-known standards make their appearance on the menu: pasta with Nonna’s marinara; baked rigatoni; chicken parmigiana; and fried calamari. But there’s so much more.
Consider these chef’s specials: citrus salmon (pan-seared with thyme, orange, cranberries and Grand Marnier sauce over coconut risotto); veal Frangelico (with cranberries, walnuts, Frangelico cream sauce and roasted potatoes); and seafood Gorgonzola (lump crabmeat, shrimp and scallops in Gorgonzola cream sauce over pasta, topped with a crab cake).
Cooking is second nature to Grisafi. His father, Nicolo Grisafi, who recently retired from Vivo Italian Kitchen on Crackersport Road, has owned Italian American restaurants across the Lehigh Valley since 1985, so Grisafi’s been in one kitchen or another since he was 12. He learned everything from his dad, he says.
The restaurant’s recipe for red sauce is his dad’s, but first it came from his grandmother, and each generation—grandmother, father, son—has made changes here and there to make the recipe their own. In Grisafi’s Italian American kitchen, recipes evolve over generations.
“All dishes are prepared to order with love, the finest ingredients and time,” Taste of Italy’s menu proclaims. No doubt the “love” relates to the family recipes and the time and care taken in the kitchen where the food is made to order. The finest ingredients feature many imported from Italy, including premium-quality semolina dry-cured pasta.
A meal at Taste of Italy is testimony that Grisafi learned his cooking lessons well.
Eggplant Vesuvio erupts with flavor. The appetizer’s mountain of thinly fried slices of eggplant are layered with burrata cheese, fresh tomatoes, roasted peppers, prosciutto, basil and red onions, then topped with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic glaze. Texture, too—crispy eggplant, creamy cheese, crunchy red onions—contributes a lot to this dish. It’s a stellar starter.
Super-creamy burrata makes another appearance in a roasted beet salad, tossed with baby arugula, cranberries, candied walnuts and balsamic vinegar. The beets’ earthiness is a lovely complement to peppery greens; cranberries and walnuts heighten the flavor with sweet notes. The vinegar adds depth and mystery.
Considering that the Taste of Italy kitchen makes about 60 pounds of meatballs weekly, it comes as no surprise that they’re so good. Tender, with a subtle background of garlic flavor, this rather traditional Italian American appetizer is dressed up, Taste of Italy style, with whipped ricotta, pesto and marinara sauce.
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A classic pasta selection, spicy rigatoni vodka is reminiscent of the rigatoni with a reputation from Carbone, the Greenwich Village celebrity-magnet Italian restaurant. This pasta’s warming and even heat is built with jarred Calabrian chilis, imported from Italy. Grisafi uses the oil in which the peppers are preserved in the pasta’s sauce; that’s as important as the peppers themselves in this dish, the chef says. Hot sausage adds another layer of heat as well as texture. Three brilliant, perfect red chilis glisten as garnish on the dish.
Now, about that aroma pouring out from under the dome of chicken Da Vinci. The combination of smoked mozzarella and smoked pancetta that tops the chicken cutlet, along with pink vodka sauce, curls into the olfactory senses with notes reminiscent of a wood-burning oven and simmering red sauce. The pasta base absorbs the flavors, making this chicken a sensory feast, especially with its pungent truffle oil drizzle.
Taste of Italy is not your “usual” Italian restaurant: another chef special, lobster Pesci, proves that without a doubt. This cornucopia of seafood features lobster ravioli, large shrimp and colossal crabmeat, plus an eight-ounce lobster tail, all dressed in a roasted pepper marsala cream sauce. The Roman god of the sea, Neptune, should have eaten so well.
Here, every dessert is served with ice cream, whipped cream and a cherry. Limoncello cake and tiramisu are imported from Italy; cannoli cream is made in house; the shells are imported.
Affogato puts on a show. Hot espresso poured over a ladyfinger, positioned like a straw in a wide-rimmed stemmed glass, runs like a stream of molten lava over a hillside of ice cream, mingling with molten ice cream at the bottom. A shower of frozen flakes of chocolate dusts the dessert like winter’s first flurry of snow. It’s a delicious picture of a grand sweet finale.
Ask Grisafi what it is about Italian food that’s so appealing, and he answers, without skipping a beat, “Family. It’s comfort food; it’s simple; it’s about family around the table. Who doesn’t want Italian?” he says.
Taste of Italy isn’t big. It isn’t fancy, but it has atmosphere, says Grisafi. Along with the visual dishes like chicken Da Vinci and affogato, the restaurant appeals to the sense of hearing, too. Music features Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and songs from Goodfellas, for example. It’s just one more part of the experience that lies at the heart of this eatery.
Grisafi understands that people eat first with their eyes; that’s why he emphasizes visual appeal. The chef likes seeing people’s faces when they’ve finished a meal at his restaurant, and he likes seeing that “they have enjoyed the experience, not just the food, but the whole experience.”
Taste of Italy
639 Main St., Hellertown | 484.851.3056 | tasteofitalyhtown.com
Hours
Tues.–Sat.: 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sun.: noon–8 p.m.
Cost: Entrées & pasta: $16–$52
Parking: Abundant parking behind restaurant and in church lot next door. Free parking on Hellertown’s Main Street.
Reservations: Recommended for dinner; tables usually available for lunch.
What to Order:
The tall tower of color and flavor eggplant Vesuvio; roasted beet and burrata salad that juxtaposes antioxidant beets with the richness of mozzarella and cream—what healthy decadence; the visual treat extraordinaire chicken Da Vinci, which tastes as good as it looks.
Published as “Inside Dish” in the December 2023 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
