Buon Appetito: A Bite of Italy in Sierra Madre

About a dozen years ago, my husband and I went to Tuscany for our honeymoon, drawn 6,500 miles east by two big things: A house and some food. More specifically, a good friend offered us her father’s 19^th-century seaside villa near Pisa for a week, and she sweetened an already irresistible deal with the promise of her housekeeper: An elderly neighbor woman named Mia Capelli, who in her youth was a lady-in-waiting to one of Italy’s fallen princesses.

“Mia could cook for you,” my friend insisted, and boy, could she ever. While we luxuriated around the pool reading Dante (my husband was reading Jacob Burckhardt, the great Italian Renaissance historian), Mia worked potato dough into delicate pieces of gnocchi and sent the aroma of fried pancetta into the air as she whipped up a huge bowl of spaghetti alla carbonara. The pasta was so good I toted the leftovers in a Tupperware bowl onto our Florence-bound train the next morning, sneaking bites in our first-class compartment when the wealthy Italians weren't looking. For years, I dreamed about that spaghetti alla carbonara.

Then about a year ago, my husband, daughter and I were wandering around Sierra Madre when we came across a tiny Italian café on the main strip. Dressed up like the best room in a Florentine family’s home, with gilt mirrors and oil paintings and little lamps on each table, Zugo’s probably seats 20 max—so many of them Pasadenans hungry from an afternoon on the Mt. Wilson trail.

Rome native Cessare (Chez) Grossi and his wife Sherry (who makes the tiramisu, torte ricotta and cupcakes for dessert) started the restaurant in homage to Chez’s mother, an outstanding cook who always shopped the outdoor markets for dinner. I find Chez’s cooking artful and dazzling—infused with love.

I always start with the crisp and savory risotto cakes ($5.95), and a slice or two of the homemade bread. Then, as for entrees which all come with a salad, it’s a toss up between the chicken marsala ($16.99), which is delightfully spiked with Italian wine and comes piled on top of mashed skins-on potatoes, or the lobster ravioli with pink sauce ($19.99). My pescatarian husband loves the just-rich-enough cannelloni ($14.99) and the herb-crusted salmon ($18.99).

At lunchtime you can sit outdoors, gaze up at the San Gabriel mountains and feast on thoughtfully constructed Panini—the mele and brie (granny smith apples, brie and carmelized onions, $8.99). Unless your kid eats grown-up food, it’s hard to find something suitable, although the kitchen is happy to whip up spaghetti with butter and Parmesan. (The bartender slathered a few pieces of the house bread with Nutella and my kid couldn’t have been more thrilled.)

Of course, the one thing on the menu that returns me instantly to that Tuscan villa is Zugo’s spaghetti alla carbona. It is unapologetically rich and smothered in pancetta—and if Mia Capelli back in Tuscany could have a biteful I believe she would approve. 

Zugo’s Café, 74 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., 626-836-5700.  Open Tue-Fri, 11am-9:30pm; Sat-Sun, 9am-9:30pm; Mon, closed. zugoscafe.com