Cicione's food filled with personality

American-Italian sandwiches worthy of owner's pride

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006

If your mom taught you to cook, your family is Italian from Delaware and South Philly, and you own a one-of-a-kind East Coast-style hot sandwich and pasta place in Eau Claire, you gotta believe in your food.

Loudly, proudly and feistily.

Joe Cicione does. An eye-catching sign on his colorful little corner restaurant reads: "Best 8 Sandwiches in Town! Here. FAST."

We say: Heed the sign and the pride. Classic American-Italian sandwiches are what Cicione's (pronounced "si-KO-neez") does best.

For all sandwiches, Cicione's uses plain white submarine rolls with semi-crisp crusts; a homey, yeasty aroma; and a tight, thirsty crumb. We've always found them impeccably fresh and perfectly suited to their purpose.

For the grilled hot sausage sandwich, $5.50 for small, Cicione's crams the roll with uneven chunks of outstanding spicy-hot Italian sausage - naturally cased, medium-fine ground, beautifully lean - and dresses them in a glistening tangle of crisp-tender green peppers and onions.

The great meatball sandwich is equally simple: a little house-made tomato sauce topped with exceptionally tender unsauced meatballs nicely flavored with onion, garlic, fennel and Italian herbs, $5.50 for small. Ask that the blanket of thin-sliced mozzarella be broiled extra long into tasty brown-flecked gold.

The Philly cheese steak sandwich is terrific as well: loaded with lean shaved beefsteak jumble-grilled with onions, peppers and ribbons of warm cheese, $4.95 for small. Many Philadelphians insist on Kraft Cheez Whiz. Cicione's offers a similar Wisconsin product, but we urge you to get the mozzarella instead.

Talk about authentic: keeping your shirtfront spot-free while eating Cicione's cheese steak requires "The Philadelphia Lean." Using both hands, hold your sandwich steady and nearly vertical over the center of your plate; its juices and traditional oil will dribble downward. Now incline your torso forward while extending your neck. Mouth and bun thus meet safely.

Cicione's popular chicken Philly, $5.50 for small, is an acceptable substitute for the real cheese steak but the moist chicken breast hunks - like chicken breast meat nearly everywhere these days - are essentially tasteless.

The house-seasoned Italian pork is sometimes better than the house-made Italian beef, smalls for $5.50. Though well flavored, the beef is occasionally chewy or gristly. During our visits, the pork was consistently savory, soft, mild and succulent. Like most sandwiches here, these both would benefit from another spoonful or two of sauce or cooking juices.

For an extra $1 you can add french fries to your sandwich - and you should. At Cicione's, they're always cooked to order. When fried long enough, which almost always happens here, they're some of the Valley's best: enticingly crisp and dry outside and fluffy within, with a fine potato flavor.

In addition to sandwiches, Cicione's offers pizza, pasta, house-made soups and a few higher-end seafood dishes like Shrimp Scampi, $14.95.

We say: Opt for soup and pasta.

When we tried the spinach-tortellini soup, the tomato broth buzzed with oregano, fennel and fresh garlic. Spinach snippets lent earthy flavor and lovely color. The tomato-sausage soup is similar and good, but adds big tomato chunks and crumbled Italian sausage.

Cicione's large pasta menu is easy to understand and hard to explain. In essence, it permits many - but not all - combinations of six pasta kinds - spaghetti, penne, fettucine, bow-tie, cheese ravioli and cheese tortellini - with seven sauces: plain tomato, a zippy marinara, tomato-meat, "blush," Alfredo, basil-pesto and their best-seller, Cajun. Many specialty pasta dishes also may be ordered with vegetables, shrimp and meats.

Lasagna is available, but it's just noodles, ricotta and red sauce, $10.50.

Cicione's best pasta sauces are the marinara with its mild red-pepper zing, the comforting tomato-meat and the dynamically spicy Cajun. Pastas are usually expertly cooked.

The Alfredo sauce coated noodles nicely but tasted thin and bland instead of properly rich and sinful; it lacked the traditional tangy savor of good Parmesan and hint of freshly ground pepper or nutmeg.

One benefit of Cicione's pasta dishes easily can become a problem. Portions here are staggering; most diners will have enough left over for at least another meal. But even for eaters with supercharged appetites, so much pasta and sauce, so much sameness, quickly can tire the palate.

So if you do order pasta, strive for variety. Order a dish with many ingredients. Add sausage or extra meatballs, $1.50, or vegetables, 75 cents. Save your salad to eat alongside.

Or do what we recently did: beg the server to talk the cooks into making a sampler. For $10.95, the Alfredo price, we tried a bowl of penne sauced four ways. We hope this catches on!

Cicione's decor, like its food and owner, has loads of personality. We especially like the dozens of fascinating framed photos from Italy and Southern Europe. It's worthwhile to wander around looking, perhaps while sipping a sprightly Peroni beer, $3.50.

Main Course, the Leader-Telegram's restaurant review column, runs the fourth Sunday of the month. Diners' Notebook, a sampling of favorite restaurant offerings, runs the second Tuesday of the month.