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83	Melillo's 829B E. Market St. (502) 540-9975

Website: http://www.melillos.com

The new Melillo's - recently moved from its tiny original quarters on Brownsboro Road to this more impressive facility in the booming arts district just east of downtown - continues to offer the hearty and delicious home-style Italian-American fare that made it a favorite in its old location ... and now you can enjoy it with a glass of vino!

Its stylish new quarters occupy space in the growing "Piazza di Felice," adjacent to the renovated historic storefont that now houses Felice Winery, a local winery that makes wines in the old-fashioned Italian country style from wine grapes trucked in from California. Melillo's features Felice wines along with an international selection of other commercial wines on its short wine list.

"The Melillo's story" "Real Italian cooking is about more than food, it is a way of celebrating God and family and friends and life. ... I discovered this at an early age when my family visited the home of my father, Joseph Melillo, in Newark, N.J. My grandfather made his wine, my grandmother always wore an apron and always wanted you to eat whether you were hungry or not. When you're at Melillo's, I want you to feel the warmth and welcome of being in my home." -- Michelle Melillo-Clem, who opened her restaurant in memory of her father, Joseph Melillo, who died in 1998

The commercial complex is still partly under construction, but its earth-tone brick buildings and sunny courtyard are already taking on a decidedly Italian look, complete with a white-sand bocce court, fountain and outdoor patio tables. The interior, although much larger than the tiny three-table space at the restaurant's original quarters, is still on the small side, carrying out the courtyard's Italian theme with bright peach and paprika colors, painted stucco and yellow brick, with an assorted gallery of old family photos, Italian artifacts and vineyard paintings.

On our first visit, the dozen-or-so tables were draped with black oilcloth (replaced with white tablecloths on a return visit), set with heavy stainless flatware rolled in big black cloth napkins, and furnished with pretty pewter votive candlesticks with little square cloth shades that look like they might have come over from Italy with somebody's grandmother. For reasons that aren't entirely obvious, the apparent "front" door isn't open to the public; to enter, you must go to the rear of the building and enter through a lobby that's still under construction.

Stucco and glass and quarry tile floors make for a hard-edged scene that magnifies every little noise. On one occasion, the piercing cries of a cranky baby echoed so resoundingly that conversation was difficult at the other end of the room. (I blame the parents, but that's another story.) Things were more peaceful on a return visit, but it's still a noisy environment.

I thought the lunch menu had grown a bit with the move to new quarters, but management assures me that it's the same. Soup (pasta fagioli, a hearty bean-and-pasta blend) is $4.99 for a bowl, $2.49 for a cup; the tasty lentil soup available initially has been dropped from the menu. Four salads range from $1.99 (for a side order of Melillo's house salad with "Mama's Italian dressing," $3.99 for medium, $6.99 for large, plus $2 for chicken or Boar's Head deli meats on the side) to $8.99 (for chicken salad). Tomato caprese, that great Italian summer salad of fresh tomatoes, creamy mozzarella and basil, is $7.99.

A roster of sandwiches, all made with rustic Italian bread shipped in as unrisen dough from an Italian bakery in Bayside, Queens, in New York City and baked on the premises, are all $6.95 and bear geographical names associated with the Melillo family. "The Oklahoma," for instance, Provolone and Swiss cheese with all the trimmings, honors the home of owner Michele Melillo-Clem's mother Enid (who is also remembered in the name of a build-your-own-sandwich option). The Brooklyn features homemade meatballs with marinara sauce and Romano cheese. The Greenberg is a chicken-breast Parmigiana on Italian bread, and so it goes.

For heartier appetites, the lunch menu offers four Italian entrees, from $7.99 (for eggplant Parmigiana or spaghetti with marinara sauce or "gravy," which in Northeastern American-Italian family cooking means long-cooked tomato sauce with meat), to $8.99 (for cheese lasagna or chicken Parmigiana).

The evening menu is more diverse and a little more pricey, although it's still affordable. Seven appetizers range in price from $6.99 (for an Arborio rice ball stuffed with Italian sausage) to $9.99 (for "bread and spread," rustic Italian bread served with assorted toppings). Other appetite-whetting goodies include oysters oreganata on the half-shell ($7.99) and mussels in a white-wine and cream sauce or an antipasto plate (both $8.99). Soup offerings are the same as at lunch; ditto the selection of salads, but the latter bump up a dollar for evening portions.

A few sandwiches grace the evening menu: The Statue of Liberty features sausage, onions and roasted red peppers; The Brooklyn Bridge is a meatball sandwich; The Times Square offers a chicken breast top with marinara sauce, mozzarella and Romano cheeses, and the Little Italy is a hearty selection of Italian meats and cheeses. About a dozen dinner entrees range from $9.99 (for linguine aglio e olio (with garlic and olive oil) to $16.99 (for veal piccata). Spaghetti with meatballs or Italian sausage is $10.99; fettuccine Ashley, apparently an Alfredo variation with cream and Romano, is $11.99; eggplant Parmigiana is $12.99, as is a filling Northern Italian option, baked cornmeal polenta topped with marinara sauce. Chicken Parmigiana is $14.99.

On our first visit, we went directly for the meatballs, recalling this Italian-American specialty as a highlight of Melillo's in its prior location. We weren't disappointed, finding them just as good as ever, beefy yet light spheres of seasoned ground beef that look almost as large as baseballs.

The spaghetti lunch entree ($7.99) comes with one meatball, but it's a big one. You can order extras a la carte if you're that hungry, but believe me, this lunch will fill you up as is, with the oversize meatball, a very generous portion of spaghetti (cooked a bit past the al dente stage), and a dark reddish, herbal, very long-simmered and caramelized marinara in the old-fashioned Italian-American family style, with just a hint of red-pepper piquancy in the background. The Brooklyn sandwich ($6.95) proved to be pretty much the same thing, meatball and marinara and tangy cheese on that excellent crusty-yet-fluffy Italian-style white bread, delicious if a little sloppy to pick up and eat. Its heft and juicy nature make it a knife-and-fork sandwich.

Accompaniments include your choice of decent potato chips or pasta salad, a small cup of a particularly good rendition, farfalle ("butterfly" or "bowtie" pasta), al dente and chilled with a tangy-sweet and rather oily vinaigrette. On our first visit it was dressed with roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts and chopped red onion. The same salad on a return visit was mostly pasta and dressing and an occasional bit of onion; still tasty but a little short on the goodies.

On another visit we tried the pasta fagioli ($2.49 a cup, often rendered as "pasta fazool" in Sicilian-American slang). This is a very good Italian peasant dish: Lots of tender beans in two varieties, white and pale pink, swim with short tubes of soup pasta and chunks of tomato in a thick, savory stew, with a gentle tang of vinegar and just a hint of peppery spice. It's delicious, and filling, and comes with a complimentary plate of sliced Italian bread, very good rustic bread the appetizing pale-gold color of unbleached wheat, textured with big, irregular holes and a gently chewy crust.

The Manhattan sandwich ($6.95), named after Melillo cousin Billy who lived there, was built from three lengthwise-sliced links of mild Italian sausage on Italian bread, topped with a ration of Melillo's marinara sauce and mild, melted mozzarella. It was such a super-size portion that the parts kept falling out of my sandwich onto my plate, but it tasted so good that I didn't really mind. That being said, at this point I began to notice that the sauce's dominating flavors, delicious in their own right, tends to make all the sandwiches taste a bit alike ... and very heavy. We can generally plan to skip dinner the evening after enjoying lunch at Melillo's.

The Edison sandwich ($6.94) is named after Melillo cousins Gina, Jack, Calogero and Gianna Torretta, who live in Edison, N.J. Since my wife had her Macintosh repaired in Edison once - and mostly because she likes portabellos - she ordered one. It was just as advertised: A whole grilled portabello mushroom cap dressed with a little mild, creamy Gorgonzola cheese spread and served on the standard Italian bread. The flavors were good, although the mushroom was on the chewy side, tending to pull out of the sandwich whole rather than succumbing to discreet bites.

One Melillo's dessert imported from the Northeast is a particular summer treat: A scoop of tart-sweet lemon ice ($3.50) comes stuffed into a whole, oversize lemon with the top sliced off, then perched back on top of the ice like a jaunty beret.

Spumoni cheesecake ($4) re-invents the original Neapolitan ice cream in tri-color cheesecake: lemon-white on top, cherry pink in the middle (with chewy bits of maraschino cherry), and pistachio green beneath, laced with a hint of rum, made on a crumb crust, topped with a little whipped cream and a few chopped nuts.

Lunches for two here, with iced tea ($1.49) or water, have run in the $20-plus range plus tip, a toll that's more than fair when you consider that these are large and filling Italian-American meals. $$

(May and July 2004)

ACCESSIBILITY: Accessible to wheelchair users, although a threshold at the building's main entrance door has an apparently temporary wooden component that could be difficult. Smoking is not permitted in the dining room, but smokers may use the patio tables outdoors.