Luce Ristorante & Enoteca

If you’ve ever eaten at Luce, you know that one of owner and executive chef Joe Buonincontri’s specialties is his southern Italian seafood (like the insalata di mare, above, inspired by his Neapolitan roots).

For our next wine dinner, Joe will be featuring some of his favorite frutti di mare (fruits of the sea) with wine pairings selected especially for the event.

And, of course, Italian wine expert and wine writer Jeremy Parzen, Ph.D. joins us as well.

The Art of Pairing Wine with Seafood
with a special menu created by
executive chef Joe Buonincontri
and Italian wine expert
Jeremy Parzen, Ph.D.
Saturday, June 16
5:00 p.m.
$50 per person

PLEASE CALL (210) 561-9700 TO RESERVE!

CLICK HERE FOR OUR NEWLY UPDATED MENUS PAGE!

A lot of Luce owner and executive chef Joe Buonicontri’s cooking is inspired by dishes his mother taught him when he was growing up in Brooklyn.

This year, celebrate Mother’s Day (Sunday May 13) with our Special Mother’s Day Menu or our Ala Carte Mother’s Day Menu.

Scenes from an Italian-American dinner with Mrs. Buonincontri (Joe’s mom).

Please note that Luce will be open on Mother’s Day from 12 noon to 4 p.m.

Our webmaster Jeremy Parzen shares notes from a lunch prepared by Italian-American mother Lidia Bastianich at her home in Friuli.

It’s difficult to overestimate the impact that Lidia Bastianich has had on gastronomic culture in the United States and on the renaissance of Italian cuisine throughout the world.

She is to our generation what Julia Child and James Beard were to my mother’s generation (my mother was a James Beard devotee, for the record).

And to her credit, she has never wavered from her devotion to regional Italian cuisine. Long before “peasant” food (what an awful and despicable term!), “rustico” cuisine, or even “Northern vs. Southern” Italian cooking ever appeared in the American gastronomic lexicon, Lidia championed regional culinary traditions from Italy, first in the Croatian neighborhood in Queens where she and her family got their start and then later at Felidia in Manhattan (a restaurant where I used to regularly take my mother during the decade that I lived in New York).

Continue reading →

MOTHER’S DAY HOURS ARE 12 NOON TO 4 PM…

Above: In his films, Martin Scorsese depicted the central role that the mother plays in family life in the Italian-American household. That’s his mother, Catherine Scorsese, in his film Good Fellas. She appeared in a number of his movies, nearly always playing herself.

“You only have one mother,” goes the saying in Italian.

Mothers hold a special place in the heart of Italians: in Italy, motherhood is cherished as in no other country on earth.

And of course, ask any Italian son or daughter and he or she will tell you that mamma’s sauce is the best…

Indeed, a lot of Luce owner and executive chef Joe Buonicontri’s cooking is inspired by dishes his mother taught him when he was growing up in Brooklyn.

This year, celebrate Mother’s Day (Sunday May 13) with our Special Mother’s Day Menu or our Ala Carte Mother’s Day Menu.

Please note that Luce will be open on Mother’s Day from 12 noon to 4 p.m.

Click image to watch video.

Thanks again, Mark, for this EXCELLENT video and interview!

We love your blog 1337 Wine.

Click here for the video.