<p>One of the Mouth's favorite dishes at Fulio's Pastaria is the seared Caesar salad with chicken. Using a grill elevates the flavor of the Romaine lettuce, and the chicken is deliciously tender. However, on a personal note, the Mouth prefers a thinner dressing than the one used at Fuilo's.</p>

If you are a regular reader of this column, you may remember me saying that I particularly love Italian food, and it is the sort of food Ive devoted the most time to perfecting in my own kitchen. My love affair with Italian food started when I was little, and a few times a year my family would make a trip to the big city of Portland, which would always include a stop at Sylvias. Sylvias was a mom and pop Italian restaurant on Sandy Boulevard, complete with red-and-white checkered tablecloths, drippy candles in chianti bottles, and a violin player who wandered the restaurant taking requests. It was perhaps not elegant, five-star dining, but it was five-star food, and even as a kid, my mouth would begin watering as soon as our car hit U.S. Route 26. In particular, Sylvias hearty, minestrone soup was the best I have ever tasted. Sylvias sadly closed their doors a few years ago after more than 40 years in the business, and the restaurants recipe for minestrone was happily released to the general public. I make it often at home, and every time I do, I feel warm from the soup and from the memories.

I am not Italian, a sad reality Ive often lamented, but I would imagine that to those for whom the culture is near and dear, Italian food is like that: part flavor, part family, part memories.

Fulios Pastaria in Astoria is one of only a few Italian restaurants in our area. Its interior is elegant and sophisticated (no checkered tablecloths here), and while I do not feel the same sense of intimacy and warm spirit that I used to feel at Sylvias and a few other Italian restaurants that still exist in the Northwest, that is not to say that I do not like Fulios food. On the contrary, I particularly like many of the dishes on Fulios menu, and after this entirely too-long introduction, Ill talk about them now.

One of my favorites from my recent visit was the seared Caesar salad with chicken, with a split head of Romaine that has been marinated and grilled so that the edges are blackened. I dont particularly care for Romaine lettuce any other way, and I find that the smoky flavor of a grill elevates it. The chicken that accompanied the Romaine was also deliciously tender and well flavored. My only semi-complaint with the dish, and this is based on my personal tastes, is that the Caesar dressing was much too thick. I prefer a light and thin Caesar, and I also like it a bit tangier, with more garlic. But again, that is my personal preference.

Butternut squash ravioli with gorgonzola cheese in a curried cream sauce is a rather non-traditional but toothsome dish. I find the mellow sweetness of butternut squash to marry quite nicely with curry, and also with gorgonzola, an assertive cheese. I did think the use of curry was a bit heavy-handed, and I say this as a person who loves curry. It is easy in a dish like this for curry to become the dominant flavor, beating out the squash, and if the amount were reduced a tad I feel the dish would be the better for it.

My dining companion found a traditional plate of spaghetti and Marinara sauce to be above average, but it was not particularly suiting to my tastes. I find the version of Marinara prepared at Fulios to be a bit too tangy and acidic for me. Even at home, I like to bend the rules a little with my own Marinara and add a tiny bit of sugar, just to tone down the intensity of the acidic tomatoes.

I do, however, appreciate the tartness in a dish like the penne putanesca, which Fulios prepares exceedingly well. Capers, anchovies and black olives add some depth to the marinara in this case, and the addition of chicken or rock shrimp (your choice) further enhances the flavor profile. I chose rock shrimp and thought them a good companion to the anchovies.

This is a minor overall point, but each dish at Fulios is served a la carte; soup or salad is not included with your entrée, and though a slice or two of bread may sometimes accompany your dish, it is otherwise only available to order, and is not provided at the table, as is customary in many Italian restaurants (since so many Italian dishes lend themselves to sopping up with bread). A simple basket of bread delivered to the table when you are seated sets the tone for your dining experience, and lends to that spirit of family and intimacy I mentioned before.

Though I had some quibbles with a few of the dishes at Fulios, overall my dining experience was quite positive, and I find many of the dishes on Fulios expansive menu to be above average.