Cara Mia Due

Four generations of a family run business!

Homey Italian, well worthy of seconds
BY JOAN REMINICK
Newsday Staff Writer

Cara Mia Due in Seaford makes a cozy haven on a wintry night. It's warm inside, both in terms of the homey yet stylish decor and gracious staff.

Although new to Long Island, the restaurant has history. According to owner Sergio DeCiantis, the original Cara Mia in Queens Village was opened by his grandparents in 1970 and is still going strong. It's there that the pasta for both restaurants (fettuccine, ravioli, lasagne and manicotti) is made, often with the help of DeCiantis' 101-year-old great-grandmother, Liberata Vani.

In the Seaford kitchen, chef Domingo Rodriguez shows that one doesn't have to be from Italy to cook Italian. I found Rodriguez's soups as spirited as they were reassuring - the garlicky escarole and bean, the zesty pasta e fagioli (white bean and macaroni soup) and the restorative stracciatella (chicken egg-drop with spinach). Much better than the rather humdrum russo salad (romaine, tomatoes, provolone, salami, cucumbers and roasted peppers) was the "pazzo" salad of grilled and sauteed vegetables. An enormous portion of tender and greaseless fried calamari proved exemplary, a bright marinara on the side.

It was a classic red sauce dish - veal Parmesan - that proved the biggest hit. The meat was fork-tender, the breading crisp, the cheese and sauce a comforting meld. Veal worked well, too, francese style - egg-battered in a citrusy lemon sauce. But shrimp alla Cara Mia - shellfish with a creamy garlic sauce over linguine - needed several shakes of salt to awaken its flavor.

Additional salt was also required for an otherwise fine fettuccine Alfredo whose clean-tasting cream sauce wasn't the slightest bit gluey, often the case elsewhere. A friend substituted fettuccine for cavatelli in a pasta dish containing sausage, broccoli rabe, garlic and oil. The end result was a vibrant success. I found gratification in the fresh manicotti, al dente tubes stuffed with a mixture of ricotta and mozzarrella and baked in a blanket of sauce and cheese. But freshly made spinach ravioli with a brown portobello mushroom sauce was way too heavy. Much livelier was penne arrabbiata, quill-shaped pasta in a fiery sauce of hot cherry peppers and fresh tomatoes.

While house-made tiramisu was good, it was outclassed by an excellent crème brûlée, its crackled top shattering at the touch of a spoon, a warm vanilla-scented custard underneath.

This is a restaurant that seems to handle large groups with ease. Perhaps that's because it is, at heart, a business that's all about family