And it's surprising, too, that there's been no updating of the slightly decrepit old house or of the menu: From the breadsticks in cello packs on every table to your carbon-backed credit card receipt, Pietro's is a living antique, changing by not changing.
Pietro's specializes in old-fashioned red-sauce Italian food, precisely the sort of thing that Primo refuses to cook in Big Night--crowd-pleasing, unsubtle concoctions of pasta and meat and tomatoes, baptized in oil, showered with cheese, designed to appeal to crass American cliches about Italian food. And they do appeal. All apologies to Italian chef-artistes like Primo and the loveliness of a perfect risotto, to the irreducible simplicity of fresh mozzarella and crusty bread, but this baroque layering of olive-oiled eggplant with rich Bolognese sauce and cheese, this mass of pasta slithering through thick tomato, this thickly creamed fettucine and heavily cheesed pizza are good too. Let others quibble about authenticity and art, our dinner at Pietro's accomplished everything a family meal is supposed to: We left satisfied and comforted.
--Mary Brown Malouf
Pietro's, 5422 Richmond, 214-824-6960. Open Tuesday -Thursday , 5 p.m.-10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday 5 p.m.-11 p.m., Sunday 5 p.m.-10 p.m.
Pietro's:
10-Inch Pizza $7.50
Fettucine Alfredo $8.50