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Dine

Boisterous atmosphere, hearty food

Tampa's Rigatoni Tuscan Oven dishes up old-fashioned southern Italian cooking, luring diners with indulgent, classic pastas and pizza by the plateful.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published March 24, 2005

	[Times photos: Keri Wiginton]
	Lobster risotto is occasionally offered as a special at Rigatoni Tuscan Oven in Tampa. “All recipes are family-made, and they won’t change,” says owner Sonia Barcena.
	Sonia Barcena and her husband, Rick, moved their restaurant out to Kennedy Boulevard after five years downtown, and evening customers followed.

TAMPA - When you open the door, you'll know that Rigatoni is the noisiest restaurant on either side of the bay. There are hard surfaces everywhere, scraping tables and chairs, a tiny dining room open to the kitchen. Actually, with three cooks, five servers and too many managers and hosts, the kitchen is an island of tranquility.

The noise can be blamed on the best of reasons: customers who are happy to be here, undismayed by a noise level that encourages them to talk and laugh all the louder. Physically it can be chaotic too. Again, it doesn't matter.

The boisterous feel matches the food: lusty, old-fashioned southern Italian, red sauce made from real tomatoes, lots of oregano and seemingly all the garlic in Gilroy.

The full name is Rigatoni Tuscan Oven, but the tone is not Tuscany. It's set by rigatoni, the pasta tubes beloved in Naples, Pulia, Calabria, Sicily and red-checked tablecloth restaurants all across America. We'd call it maccheroni, if some chain hadn't already appropriated it.

If you think those old flavors pale in a pesto-crusted world, stand in the parking lot (or try to) between Rigatoni and the Papa John's outlet next door on a Friday night.

If you thought independents were doomed, try getting in here. The young mom and pop, the Barcena family, had some advantages. They had spent five years downtown catering to the courthouse gang. Now where other restaurants have pictures of Sinatra or the pope, Rigatoni has photographic evidence of the blessing of the omnipresent Monsignor Laurence Higgins and Mayor Pam Iorio. When the Barcenas moved out to Kennedy Boulevard last year, the South Tampa establishment came tumbling after.

Smart move by all concerned. Food like this is too hefty for many lunchers, and the downtown dinner business is still a fantasy. Moving out makes it more tempting for evening diners to indulge in spaghetti and meatballs, heaps of rigatoni or pizza topped with fresh ricotta by the scoop. (Supersized bowls and plates in Fiesta-style colors are about the only trendy feature.) After the sun goes down, you want to enjoy those yeasty, oily, crisp garlic topknots with more than your eyes and nose.

Your best bet is to give in to the gutsy classics like baked ziti, short tubes cooked with ground beef in a creamy ricotta sauce, with punchy tomato sauce on top. This is why casseroles were invented. Makes you wish our winters were colder.

Just as hearty is rigatoni, which has more of a curve than ziti, here done with sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, cream and chicken (wish there was a way to make this with dark meat).

Penne alla carrettierra, a cart driver's pasta, is not made with the more common tuna, but it's still big eating; tomatoes, capers, olives and sausage make for big flavor.

Eggplant Parmesan, which I expected to warm the soul and boost the cholesterol just as richly, disappointed. The eggplant slices were deep-fried and hard, with more fat than I had counted on. Guess I've spent too much time with slightly less fatty versions in which the eggplant is baked and then larded with melted cheese.

Yet I was happily surprised by grouper, done in a lighter style from Liguria: capers, olives, fresh tomatoes and a smack of anchovy, over penne. Quite light, but you still shouldn't finish it.

Pizza takes up a big chunk of the menu, and the waiter said it would be thin-crusted, but it was too thick for me. Could be fighting words to some, but pizza is personal. Beyond the crust, I love the soft ricotta, got a spicy kick from red sauce, but just was not up to a white pizza of spinach, feta and still more cheeses. I was dismayed to find the sausage in small pellets, but they were packed with fennel.

Among starters, the shrimp were medium-sized and tasted fresh from the grill. Fried calamari were as crisp as you want. There's nothing pretentious about the wine; one server proudly showed a jug of Almaden to a customer. For dessert there are tiramisu and cheesecake, but unless you take more than half of your meal home, stick to espresso.

I feared we had lost our hunger for small independents, until I tried Rigatoni.

Turns out we have a very big appetite.

3437 Kennedy Blvd., Tampa

Phone: (813) 879-7000

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday; noon to 11 p.m. Saturday; 3 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday

Details: Credit cards accepted; beer, wines available; no smoking indoors

Features: Catering, takeout

Prices: Salads, sandwiches and pizza, $6.95 to $17.99; entrees, $9.95 to $15.95.

[Last modified March 23, 2005, 10:29:06]