RESTAURANT REVIEW + PHOTOS: Ciao Baci winter menu a winner

If anybody is handing out a restaurant award for the area's dimmest interior lighting, Ciao Baci would be a top contender.

Owen is the latest chef at Ciao Baci, which Suzanne Boscarolo opened in 2001, originally as a second outlet to downtown's Ciao. It's in a former house that was the original location of the late Andre Simon's Andre's Hillcrest. (Ciao, a predominantly Italian restaurant now in other hands, continues to thrive on West Seventh Street.)

It has been a while since we ate at Ciao Baci, which is still a trendy place for the beautiful, trendy elite to meet and eat. But we've now shed any residual image of its former incarnation, a pricey, pretentious tapas place.

Be prepared to be surprised, as we were, by Owen's winter menu. He has broadened his cuisine quite a bit from its onetime Mediterranean focus, and now features a wide variety of dishes in various categories and price ranges. And it's now possible to emerge from Ciao Baci with a satisfactorily full stomach without quite emptying your wallet.

Ciao Baci has four dining spaces, two indoor, two outdoor. Outdoors, in fair weather, is certainly more popular and fills up quickly. The front porch, facing Beechwood Street, is for smokers. The side porch is screened off by plastic sheeting that is either open to catch breezes or rolled down when it's inclement (and with wall-mounted heaters to take off any chill), with faux marble table tops and faux wood plastic patio furniture.

Indoors, the bar (Ciao Baci also has an award-winning wine list) and a kind of informal lounging area dominate the front room, with a few tables; a back dining room with another half-dozen or so unclothed tables gives customers a bit more privacy, away from the front door, which, as it more or less constantly opens and closes during peak hours, can be a bit of a dining distraction.

We mentioned that the lighting, mostly from pin spots, is pretty dim, which is an especial curse if you're one of those people fond of taking photos of your food -- but a blessing, too, because in some measure, the decor, currently comfortably down-at-heel, could soon be headed to perhaps an early shade of shabby.

There's nothing shabby about Owen's kitchen output, though, or the service, which was universally good.

You can choose openers either from the menu's "lighter fare" section or from the "all day fare," available until midnight. From the former, try the excellent Chicken Noodle Soup ($4 cup, $7 bowl), chunks of moist roasted chicken in a rich broth with egg noodles, mirepoix (slow-cooked onions, carrots and celery, misspelled on the menu as "mire piox") and garnished with parsley. The cup is plenty as an appetizer or a light meal; take on the bowl if you're really hungry or have a whopper of a cold coming on. (Ciao Baci doesn't offer a soup of the day -- they have a "Soup of the Moment," also $4/$7, which "changes on our whim.")

We're not normally big on first-course salads, but we couldn't resist (and we're glad we didn't) the Grilled Wedge Salad ($8), lettuce sheaves topped with large, chewy chunks of smoky house bacon, smoked blue cheese, scallions, a tomato concasse and a house-made ranch dressing. The "little Caesar" ($5), ordered as a side item, turned out to be a pretty big Caesar, chopped romaine lightly coated in a tangy Caesar dressing with crisp croutons and plenty of grated parmesan.

Pasta fans will glory in the Beef Bolognese ($14), firm rigatoni in a red-wine, tomato-meat sauce, topped with grated parmesan, basil and bread crumbs. And we were delighted with our red wine/soy-glazed Charred Hanger Steak ($28), with garlicky wilted spinach and shiitake mushrooms on a mashed-potatoes-like bed of cauliflower puree. An all-day-fare version of the hanger steak ($21) comes with hash-brown cake, arugula and a house Worcestershire.

Another thrill on the all-day menu: steamed mussels ($10 for a dozen) in a garlic-parsley broth, topped with crisp-fried shoestring potatoes that provide a nice added texture (especially while we were slopping up the remainder broth, for which the accompanying fresh bread, already olive-oiled and peppered, was a bit messy).

If you really want to go to town, throw yourself on chef Owen's mercy with the changes-nightly $45 Chef's Tasting, "a five course progression of small plates of what you should be eating."

Weekend on 03/02/2017

Luckily, the "seasonally inspired, globally influenced" food on chef Jeffrey Owen's winter menu is well worth the eye strain.