Master of Sicilian Cuisine : New Spot Gives Chef Chance to Show His Stuff

There would be fewer Walter Mittys in this world if there were more Lisa Busalacchis.

Lisa, mistress of the dining rooms at Hillcrest’s new Busalacchi’s, is married to Joe, master of the kitchen and a rather able handler of the subtler offerings of Sicilian cuisine. The nice thing about Lisa, other than her attentive presence, is the outspoken support she gives her husband in their current restaurant venture; the pair formerly owned the Casanova pizza house at Grossmont Center.

“Joe makes a good pizza, but he’s too good to spend his life just making pizza,” Lisa said one recent evening. “He needed to have a restaurant like this because he’s the best.”

The new restaurant, a comfortable place that formerly housed Maison Fifth Avenue, is a fine showcase for Joe Busalacchi’s notable gifts. The Sicilian-born chef has written an attractive, unusual menu that concentrates on the specialties of his homeland, but also includes several popular dishes from the southern regions of the Italian boot.

This menu could be characterized in several ways. For example, it pays the typical Sicilian-Italian homage to the vegetable world, often offering the issue of the earth as dishes in their own right, rather than as adjuncts to meat, fish or fowl. The tomato, probably regarded as the symbol of Italian cooking by most Americans, by no means dominates the cooking; when it appears, it is often as an accent rather than a dominant ingredient; often, fresh tomato is used instead of the canned variety. The commercial, all-purpose red sauces to which so many restaurants sadly resort are not found here.

However, the single element that unifies the menu and appears in nearly every dish is garlic, the scent of which fills the restaurant’s atmosphere with a rich, pungent, appetizing and almost tangible aroma. In its most straightforward role, it is the star ingredient of the spaghetti aglio e olio, the quick, economical dish of pasta tossed with garlic warmed in olive oil that every Italian housewife supposedly knows how to cook. (The dish actually can be tricky to prepare, since if overly hot, the oil will make the spaghetti gummy.) But garlic makes its presence more or less strongly felt in nearly everything, even in the piles of fresh, lightly cooked green beans that sometimes garnish entree plates.

Vegetables rear their lovely heads in nearly every department of the menu. For example, it would be possible to build a three-course meal out of artichokes by beginning with the carciofi fritti, or pan-fried, breaded artichokes; continuing with the insalata pepuccio, a salad composed of a boiled artichoke dressed with olives, sweet peppers and oil and vinegar, and concluding with an entree of carciofi ripieni, in which the many-leaved vegetable is stuffed with bread crumbs, raisins, pine nuts and Parmesan cheese and doused with a ladleful of marinara sauce.

The equally lovable eggplant also makes multiple appearances, each marvelous. In the cold appetizer called caponata, eggplant stars in a vegetable ensemble that also includes olives, celery, capers, onion, garlic and tomato, the various ingredients cooked gently to a smooth richness, and then allowed to rest in the refrigerator until their flavors have thoroughly mingled. (This is the Sicilian answer to the French ratatouille, to which it by no means plays second fiddle.) The spaghetti alla melanzane includes attractive squares of fried eggplant mixed with a bit of tomato sauce, and the vitello con melanzane varies the veal alla parmigiana theme by topping slices of breaded veal with prosciutto ham; fat, tender slices of fried eggplant; a coverlet of mild cheese, and a spoonful of marinara sauce.

The nicely varied menu also offers lentil soup and, often, pasta e fagiole, the popular and hearty blend of beans and tiny pasta teamed in a thick broth. Other starter choices of note are the antipasto plate that includes meats, cheeses, caponata and pepperonata (a kind of pepper hash); the squid salad, and the insalata Siciliana, a hefty mixture of boiled potatoes, green beans, tomatoes and red onions, the whole moistened with olive oil and flavored with oregano.

The pastas can be split between two guests as a pasta course, or, of course, consumed as a light meal. The list includes such standards as spaghetti in meat sauce and linguini with pesto, but pays more attention to such less familiar dishes as noodles with broccoli sauteed with garlic and olive oil, ditallini (tiny pasta tubes) in a sauce of green peas and onions, spinach fettucine tossed with fresh tomato sauce, and a vegetarian lasagne made with layerings of spinach, ricotta cheese and marinara sauce.

Busalacchi also prepares a special pasta every day; this recently was an outstanding rigatoni alla palermitana, in which the fat macaroni was dressed with a zesty mixture of crumbled sausage, fresh tomato, capers and black olives.

The entree list includes a whole litany of veal dishes, from the simple fried, breaded cutlet to the entirely satisfying spiedini. This last resembles small sausages in both appearance and flavor, although sausage is not part of the picture. For this dish, small veal scallops are rolled around scallions, mixed cheeses and minced salami, given a light dusting of crumbs, threaded alternately with pungent bay leaves on skewers, and grilled. This was an excellent dish, as was the much more familiar veal piccata, in which sauteed slices of veal were dressed with a deglazing sauce that included butter, white wine, lemon juice and mushrooms.

Liver gets little play on restaurant menus these days, but Busalacchi’s includes it in an interesting variation on the usual liver-and-onion theme that incorporates a light but piquant sweet-sour sauce. Much of the sweetness seems to come from the onions themselves, which are cooked to the point at which they begin to caramelize in their own juices.

Sicily, surrounded by the sea, eats much seafood, but Busalacchi pays it relatively little attention. The clams cooked in a buttery, garlic-scented wine broth are quite nice, and make a good, light meal; other choices include stuffed squid, fried baby squid, shrimp sauteed with capers, garlic and lemon, and charbroiled swordfish seasoned with oregano, olive oil and lemon, a very Sicilian presentation indeed.

An attractive tray of desserts is presented at the conclusion of the meal, but by and large it is populated with the offerings of outside suppliers. The one in-house item, the cannoli, are absolutely delicious and nearly perfect, the only complaint being that they should either be twice the size, or be served two per order.

BUSALACCHI’S

3683 5th Ave., San Diego

298-0119

Dinner served 5-10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; until 11 p.m. weekends.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $25 to $50.