REVIEW: Luigi's has kept a good thing going for 50 years by refusing to change
Sometimes it's been months. Sometimes it has been years, but every time I walk through the door of Luigi's - Colorado Springs' definitive Italian restaurant - it feels like I was just there yesterday.
Nothing has changed. Not the red-andwhite checkered tablecloths on the tiny tables. Not the dusty Chianti bottles hung on the walls. And thankfully, not the fromscratch family recipes. This year, Luigi's is celebrating 50 years of serving those dishes, making it the oldest family-owned eatery in the city. In the past half-century, it has stayed true to timeless American-Italian traditions that now make it the Godfather of the restaurant scene.
The owners say it's the lack of change that crams the restaurant with loyal diners.
"Everything else in the world may change," Gina Costley said by phone recently. "But the homemade tortelacci stays the same. That's what people love."
Costley's parents opened the original Luigi's (named for her grandfather) in an old service station next door in 1958. It was a tiny place with four tables on what was then the edge of town, serving pizza, a few pasta dishes, and 3.2 beer. Dad cooked, mom ran the front. Gina and her siblings helped and sometimes fell asleep on late nights under the big kitchen table in the back.
Luigi's moved to the current address (another old gas station) in 1966 and expanded to a sit-down place.
"In 40 years, the menu hasn't really changed," said Costley, who now owns the restaurant with her husband, Les. (He cooks, she runs the front.) It starts with the original homemade sauces and family recipes. They make their own sausage and meatballs. They grate their own mozzarella like it's 1958.
You can always expect Luigi's to taste exactly the same. Just don't expect it to be true Italian food. Lately, trendy Italian places have begun to showcase obscure regional specialties - Milanese risotto, Venetian seafood - that fancy chefs have ferreted from trans-Atlantic trips. Luigi's serves Italian-American immigrant dishes.
"When people ask what region our menu comes from," Costley said (and they often do because The Broadmoor has a habit of referring sophisticated guests), "I say, ‘Chicago.' That's where our family is from, and that's where the recipes are from. If you have an Italian grandmother, chances are she makes food a lot like ours."
My favorite is the tortelacci with a thick link of spicy, homemade Italian sausage ($15.85). The hand-formed bundles of pasta stuffed with cream cheese, salty Romano and fresh spinach arrive in a pipinghot dish smothered in old-school, Chicago red Italian meat sauce and sweet, creamy beciamella. It's unbelievably rich.
Just as good, but lighter, is the Manicotti ($15.85), stuffed with ricotta cheese spiked with what tastes like a hint of nutmeg, then doused in the same duo of red and white sauces. (A vegetarian red also is available.) Luigi's has a short list of appetizers, but most dishes come with a choice of a good house salad or a cup of thick, hearty minestrone, loaded with tomatoes, kale and beans, and all tables get a generous basket of warm, chewy bread, so there's no need for appetizers.
Don't skip the pizza, though ($6-$20). The thin, crisp crust is loaded to the breaking point with just-cut mushrooms, highquality Italian meats and a supergarlicky homemade sauce.
The cheese is extra rich and gooey. Most restaurants use a preshredded mozzarella. To keep the shreds from sticking, distributors use a part-skim cheese and dust the shreds with starch, making for a dryer, firmer melted cheese. Luigi's grates its own, using whole-milk cheese that makes for a stringy, gooey, exquisite experience.
I've always thought the premade desserts at Luigi's were worth skipping, but this year the family brought back a 50th Anniversary Spumoni. It's a vintage ice cream recipe it served decades ago with the three bright retro colors of the Italian flag - campy and out of style, but absolutely delicious.
A few things have changed. The smoking section and veal Parmesan were both retired by changing tastes.
Costley says she would like to change other things, such as the cramped, rickety bar (I'd add the low, dated ceiling panels and faux wood on the walls), but she says she can't get away with it.
"Our loyal customers won't let us. This place is like a museum to them. Five years ago we bought new chairs and they were worried," she said.
If it is a museum, it is one with a great permanent collection: family recipes that have pleased Springs diners for half a century. Here's to the next half.
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Contact the writer: nathaniel.glen@gazette.com
DETAILS
Luigi's
**** (The Godfather of local Italian)
Address: 947 S. Tejon St.
Phone: 632-7339
Hours: 5 p.m.-close, Tuesdays-Sundays
Entrees: $6.10-$25.50
Vegetarian: Yes
Liquor: Full bar
Plastic: Yes
