One of the hottest reservations to get lately had been in Metairie. It is Fausto’s Bistro, a charming little Sicilian Italian restaurant operated by brothers Fausto and Roland DiPietro of the family of delicious Sicilian restaurants. All renowned around town in the last century as well as this one, these include Irene’s, Renata’s and Fausto’s. Renata married a Zuppardo many years ago and moved north, leaving Irene’s and Fausto’s remaining until recently.
Earlier this year Fausto’s changed hands, undergoing a renovation that didn't materially change anything. It smells like new construction, (a smell I love), and it just looks fresher, but the footprint remained the same. The bar is certainly spiffier. Unfortunately, the bathrooms are still minuscule and hidden.
The chef is the same. And the menu is the same. A specials sheet has a few choices of apps and entrees. And it’s all offered at astonishing prices.
After many attempts, we finally made it there for dinner. There were four of us and the bill was $108. We had two apps and three entrees., including a softshell crab special. We started the way we always do here. Fausto’s has a terrific arancini. It is one enormous ball of rice which envelopes ground meat and cheese and peas. It is breaded and deep-fried and sits in a lake of delicious thick and smooth cooked-all-day red sauce.
Tom had the Caper Chicken Breast with Lemon Butter Sauce, seems at first glance to be like Chicken Piccata. But instead of a breadcrumb crust, it was lightly dusted in flour. It was pounded thin and covered in the lemon butter sauce. This was served with penne pasta Bordelaise. I don’t think penne with a garlic and olive oil sauce is a good match, and this penne was too al dente for my taste. But the flavor was nice, albeit somewhat faint. Also, it was cold. None of this was really problematic . The dish was tasty enough.
The softshell crab was fried crispy golden brown and sort of crumpled atop a mound of thin linguine in a thick creamy crawfish sauce. There were largish pieces of fresh tomato in this sauce which was distracting, but not enough to diminish the intense seafood flavor of this wonderful pasta dish. The softshell crab was perfectly fried. I loved this dish with its clash of textures and flavor. The crunch of the softshell crab against the creamy pasta sauce amply studded with crawfish made it all interesting as well as delicious.
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There was a meatballs and spaghetti entree on the table. It was served with angel hair pasta and came with three medium-sized meatballs. The same delicious thick and smooth red sauce was part of this, but as I am seeing now everywhere, there is not enough sauce to cover the pasta.
In Europe, spaghetti and marinara is called Pomodoro, (and is seen in front of all tourists) and the sauce is completely integrated with the pasta, just coating it. In America we tend to put a large pool of sauce in the middle of the pasta, leaving it to the diner to mix the two. It seems like a better idea to toss it for the diner like in Europe, because this style of sauce service here makes a restaurant look ungenerous. But that is the way I am seeing it everywhere. I'm American and I like a lot of sauce, but there never seems to be enough. The meatballs weren’t especially firm or crumbly as I prefer, but they were fine. It was a basic plate of meatballs and spaghetti.
The last thing on the table was an appetizer that someone got as an entree. It was an appetizer size but that suited just fine since the person ordering it wasn't that hungry. It was a deep-fried breaded version of crab stuffing made with blue crab, It had an intense crab flavor and was pretty full of crab shreds rather than lumps. But it was a sticker shock at $10.95 for a decent-sized crabcake. I never see crabcake of any kind in the $10 range. Such a deal! It was liberally doused with remoulade sauce and served over a bed of chopped iceberg lettuce.
Everyone was happy with their choices, and I left thinking what everyone else is thinking: this is exceptionally good food at an extremely affordable price. In that regard, it is no different from the old Fausto's. And that’s a good thing. No need to fix what ain’t broken.
