La Lanterna—A Ridgewood Original

Visiting La Lanterna Cafe and Grill is almost like dining at a friend's elegant house. Paul Karoutsos does the cooking and his wife, Joanne, who grew up in Ridgewood, knows many of her guests by name. And if she doesn't know yours initially, she soon will.

Son Cristos and daughter Marianne are part of the wait staff, while another son runs a restaurant in New York.

La Lanterna is set in an old bank building on West Ridgewood Avenue, with high ceilings, gorgeous woodwork and nice-sized tables, including one in a cozy, private niche.  There's also a new addition, built on the side where the drive-through window used to be, and it opens onto the sidewalk in the summer.

There's a set menu, but it is the specials you want to hear about. (Except for chicken dishes at $20.95, most specials are either $27.95 or $28.95.)

The other night we started with what is really a "Crab Cake La Lanterna." The crab is mixed, not with breadcrumbs but with angel hair pasta and cheese. It is offbeat, with a very different texture than most crab cakes we've had, but very nice.

Next came "side salads," which are smaller than the regulars on the menu and included in the price of an entrée—a nice touch. My partner had his favorite Caesar and I had the house salad, arugula, goat cheese, walnuts and sliced apples with a raspberry vinaigrette.

For main courses, he had the shrimp scampi on linguini, his favor pasta, but you can have it on whatever pasta you like. I had a grilled swordfish with risotto, cooked to perfection.

For dessert, we split a tartufo, which was heavy on chocolate ice cream (my favorite) and light on vanilla (his favorite), but it was served at the right temperature, not frozen so hard you had to split it with a knife.

There used to be a lot of Dean Martin in La Lanterna's music mix because Joanne loves him (as I do), but my partner does not, and the music choices have become a running joke between them. Joanne has a good sense of humor when it comes to opinionated guests.

Reservations are a must on the weekends and a good idea during the week, because we've rarely been there when the place is not very busy.

"I get a knot in my stomach at 8 o'clock every Friday and Saturday night," Joanne says. The reason: There are two seatings, and if she promises a crowd they can have their tables at 8:05, she tries to make sure it happens. She and the staff have resetting a table down to a science—three minutes tops.

Paul, who was raised on a farm in Greece, selects fresh food for the kitchen daily and likes to try out new ideas in the kitchen. And despite his Greek heritage, the menu is definitely Italian, which is Joanne's heritage (Calabria). When he first came to the United States in the 1970s, he went to work in an Italian restaurant and later met Joanne while cooking in an Italian restaurant in Ridgewood, which is no longer in business.

The two were married in 1980 and opened their first restaurant together in Washington Township in 1983, selling it in 1989, and opening the Garden Patch in the Paramus Park mall. When rents went up, they sold it and took over the bank building in Ridgewood, hiring a Ukrainian craftsman to help them renovate and retain as much of the bank's original woodwork as possible. They formally opened in 2005.

While it is not large, La Lanterna is probably the village's best looking restaurant.  In the summer, there used to be outdoor tables in the bank's old drive-through space and last year they enclosed that area to provide year round dining and to handle the overflow weekend crowds. But there is still room for outdoor dining in the summer.

The restaurant, which serves lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday, opens at 5 p.m. on Sundays and is closed Mondays. The Karoutsos do not do catering in other locations, although if you want a special dish for a party and are willing to pick it up, you can.

With Paul on duty in the kitchen and Joanne in the front, there's no time. "We can't be in two places at once," Joanne says.  "And if you are catering a party, you have to be there to see that everything is going the way it should."

And at La Lanterna, things always go the way they should.

Food: Excellent

Service:  Excellent

Entrée Price Range: $9.95 to $28.95

Atmosphere: Elegant

Credit Cards Accepted