Perfectly Frank

Back when I was waiting tables, I liked to end my shift with a couple of stiff drinks at the bar, then wander over to Jimmy and Mary's Steakhouse at 34th Street and Main -- it used to serve food until 3 a.m. -- for a plate of ravioli, a tossed salad and two buttered slabs of Roma bread before I started, you know, some serious boozing. The steakhouse was well over forty years old then and was already a bit shabby around the edges, but who cared? The look was part of the restaurant's distinctive personality; the neighborhood had definitely lost whatever allure it may have once had, but Jimmy and Mary's still possessed a kind of rakish charm, 1950s glamour gone to seed.

The Italian-American fare was solid enough -- garlic-broiled steaks, fried chicken, coconut-cream pies in graham-cracker crusts -- and the people watching was even better. In the mid-'80s, the place attracted a rogue's gallery of guests, from Mission Hills socialites to Main Street working girls. One late night, an octogenarian in a checkered sports coat and jaunty fedora turned to me and announced that he was "the ambassador to the United States from merry old Scotland." I looked down to see that his shoes were held together with duct tape. "But that was many years ago, dear boy," he said. "I've had a few reverses."

"It was a diverse clientele, that's for sure," recalls Frank Macaluso, who for fourteen years managed the place for his grandmother, the legendary Mary Tidona of the namesake restaurant. (Her original partner, Jimmy Goodwin, stayed in the business only a few months.) "We had doctors, judges, street people. A vast variety of people."

The boisterous and good-natured Macaluso closed Jimmy and Mary's Steakhouse in 1994 and started a catering company. It's taken him nearly a decade to open a new restaurant, this one named for Mary's great-granddaughter, his daughter Gia. It's a more upscale venue than Jimmy and Mary's, but the large portrait of Mary Tidona -- in a black-velvet dress, white opera gloves, and pearls -- that dominated the 34th Street location is now hanging in a prominent spot in the new dining room.

The dining room of Gia's Italian Cucinais barely four months old, but the brick building dates back to the early twentieth century, when it was a neighborhood grocery store (including a long stint as one of the early Milgram's) in a West Side community bustling with industry. By the 1920s, this stretch of the boulevard was already pretty industrial, with chemical companies, repair shops, warehouses, feed stores, and auto-repair shops. With so many businesses, it wasn't surprising that the area was loaded with little cafés and diners to feed the workers. All the joints were listed in the city directories by the names of the cook-owners: Mrs. Amelia Becker, Mrs. Jennie Householder, Mrs. Anna Hudgins. Within a decade, most of those little restaurants were gone. Nearly half a century would pass before Southwest Boulevard had a revival as "restaurant row."

Macaluso's place is the first exclusively Southern Italian restaurant in the neighborhood in years, and it's a welcome addition. The 49-seat space has been given a neoclassic bistro design -- concrete floors; whirling fans hanging from 14-foot ceilings; shiny, uncloaked tables; a granite-topped bar -- and a menu that combines the best of the Mary Tidona recipes (lasagna, ravioli, steaks) with newer culinary innovations created by chef Ryan Solien. It's a successful mix of traditional and stylish, with only a handful of Tidona's extensive Italian-American dishes surviving into the millennium. One old favorite that didn't make the cut: Southern-fried chicken (a staple, interestingly enough, of most Sicilian restaurants for decades), which Macaluso says he may add to the menu. "You can't imagine the calls we get asking about it," he says.

I don't remember Caesar salads prepared tableside at Jimmy and Mary's, but they're a huge hit at Gia's, where Macaluso or one of his staff does a performance-art piece (one well worth the price), creating a remarkably faithful reproduction of Caesar Cardini's original, made-in-Tijuana version: A garlicky, golden vinaigrette of olive oil, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, egg, red-wine vinegar, anchovies, grated Parmesan, and Worcestershire sauce (with a splash of hot sauce, Frank's "secret" ingredient) is mixed in a large walnut bowl and tossed with croutons and chopped romaine. It's delicious and generous enough to stand alone as a complete meal, eaten with a few wedges of the buttery, freshly baked focaccia or one of the heartier appetizers, such as the fried artichoke hearts stuffed with herbed cheese or chef Solien's elegantly composed cakes of golden fried risotto floating on a puddle of pale-yellow saffron sauce.

On my first visit, I settled for a more demure salad -- cubes of ruby-red beets mixed with crumbles of goat cheese, slivers of mint and chopped onion in a red-wine vinaigrette -- to accompany a decadent supper of fried potato puffs, Solien's variation on gnocchi. The airy, amber-crusted dumplings soaked up the sage-seasoned butter sauce.

My friend Steve, practicing that carb-free diet, ate only an antipasto plate that night, but it was generously heaped with a briny olive salad, capocollo ham, salami, mortadella, salty chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano, soft mozzarella, and provolone. Bob cooed over the tender veal lemonata, its fork-tender flesh lusciously appointed with succulent artichoke hearts and capers.