Strip Mall Parmigiana (Porto Bello, 43-18 Ditmars Boulevard)

It likely would have taken us a lot longer to discover Porto Bello (the Pretty Door?) were it not for Leo, the diminutive Italian barber on 21st Avenue that one of us goes to now and then for a haircut. Leo has been practicing his trade in Astoria since well before either of us were born, back when the neighborhood was much more Italian than it is now. Figuring he'd be able to sort out which was the best of the many old-school Italian restaurants in the area, we asked him what his favorite Italian restaurant was. He recommended not one of the storied (and possibly mobbed up) places, but Porto Bello, a relatively new restaurant in the shopping center on Ditmars at 48th street.

It's not what we would have expected. Because it's in a strip mall and has a parking lot, Porto Bello is like something out of suburbia, the kind of run-of-the-mill pizza restaurant you'd find in any small town as a staple option. It would be easy to lump Porto Bello (Port-O-Bello on the shopping center's sign) in with those often-unimaginative places and expect mediocrity. Perhaps aware of this, though, it seems to work harder, making none of the little mistakes that can creep in when expectations are low.

Porto Bello is larger than you'd expect inside, and this helps make it seem like more than a glorified pizzeria. The uniformed waiters help too, though ours -- lumbering, bulky, and brusque, yet not at all incompetent -- seemed like a moonlighting high-school football player. We asked for recommendations, as usual, and he was a little too generous, naming so many different dishes that he may as well have used the time-honored cop-out and said, "They are all good."

But that said, everything we tried was good. How Porto Bello executed the typically humdrum chicken parmigiana was indicative. There was nothing adventurous about it; it was just well done. The dish was made not from a prebreaded cutlet but instead a chicken breast lightly coated with a fresh layer of peppery bread crumbs, supplying texture without giving the grease somewhere to collect when the meat was fried. Mozzarella cheese was not piled on indiscriminately, but was applied with a knowing artistry, to complement rather than overwhelm. The marinara sauce was rich and flavorful without being too acidic, sweet or lumpy. And the pasta was properly cooked; it wasn't limp or waterlogged, and the portion was not wasteful. All and all, an unimaginative plate of comfort food was made entirely respectable. Our pasta dish, the Rigatoni Fiorentina (Porto Bello's most popular entree), was similarly pleasing. Tender chicken, spinach, and mozzarella in a creamy pink sauce, much like a vodka sauce (we can't be sure if there was any Finlandia action happening backstage), was perfectly sweet-savory, and filling without being belly-achingly heavy.

With Astoria's depleted Italian contingent, it's easy to stick to the standbys: Trattoria l'Incontro, Piccolo Venezia, and the like. But Porto Bello shows that a restaurant doesn't have to have known the neighborhood way back when to get it right.

Price: Reasonable. Good value for quality.
Will we go again? Yes, and we'll feel smug the whole time that we're getting a good meal in a strip mall.

Happy Orange (Ukus, 42-08 30th Avenue)

At Ukus, one of a handful of Balkan establishments curiously clustered around an otherwise nondescript block east of Steinway on 30th Avenue, we asked the server what he recommended, and without missing a beat he said, "You need spinach burek and cevapi," then took the menus from us without giving us any of the usual "Or if that doesn't suit your tastes...." None of that namby-pamby crap here! He knows what Ukus is about. It seemed that he was Ukus (though we later saw several shower-capped women scurrying in and out with pots and pans; they came to and from the basement via the outer cellar doors): He seemed to perform much of the behind-the-counter grill work and was also the lone waiter, which was fine for the 24 seats inside. With his brusque efficiency and decisiveness, he exuded what we delicately term "big-dick confidence" (though not as much as the soccer player we saw earlier at Astoria Park -- a twentysomething striker who wore under his shorts pink pajama pants decorated with little soccer balls).

Waiter knows best, as it turns out. The spinach burek, a savory Balkan pie, is the finest burek we've had. Its perfectly crisp and flaky layers of phyllo surrounded the appropriately thin filling of spinach graced with feta, and the inner phyllo layers were just soft enough not to be soggy while supplying a suitable contrast in texture.

The Balkan sausages, cevapi, manage to be both meaty and fluffy. The moist, tender links come inside a piece of horizontally sliced tangy flatbread and accompanied by chopped onions, sour cream, and ajvar, a spicy relish made with eggplant, red peppers, and chili peppers. We weren't sure of the proper way to eat the dish, so we just ripped off pieces of the bread, layered it with the condiments, plopped a sausage on top and enjoyed our delicious miniature sandwiches. All this was washed down with a bottle of Jupi -- "Happy Orange" flavor.



Ukus isn't as, shall we say, austere in ambiance as some other Balkan restaurants in the neighborhood. In fact, it features a couple of downright (if unintentional) quirks, like a elf-size storage door mounted high on the wall, as if the ceiling were the floor. Also, hanging on the exposed brick wall at the back of the place, a little carved-wood "ukus" sign (with the letters all lowercase, in a Cooper Black-ish font) that seemed like someone's junior-high wood shop project.

When we asked for our check, we complimented the waiter on his recommendations. He looked at us the way Warren Buffett presumably would if you praised his investment prowess. This is what I do, his expression said. And he did it well.

Price: Under $10.
Will we go again? Ukusno means delicious in Bosnian, and we're not ones to argue.