Children's Hospital Benefit at Luca d'Italia

Luca, Frank Bonanno's second restaurant after Mizuna, is not on our regular rotation of places to eat primarily because we do Italian food really well and when we go out we like to eat something we don't or can't do at home. That's why we spend a lot of time ordering fois gras and pea tendril salad at Mizuna.

On the other hand, every time we end up going to Luca we come away newly impressed with the sophistication of the room and the inventiveness and downright quality of the food. I still have dreams about the rabbit three ways that is a frequent offering on the secondi list. And there was one fat back antipasti that to my tastes has never been equalled.

Luca certainly lived up to all of our past experiences last Monday night at the Children's Hospital Benefit Dinner hosted by Frank and Jacqueline Bonanno, who have been hosting this event for the past five years. They have a special fondness for Childrens because the name sake of the restaurant, their son Luca, was born with a rare form of epilepsy that was miraculously cured by the neurosurgeons there.

Coincidentally, Dr. Holder, the superstar surgeon who operated both on Luca and Samantha, our granddaughter when she needed surgery to remove a tumor when she was still just in her first year was among the first guests we saw during the cocktail hour prior to dinner. I nursed one glass of wine (I was driving after all) and kept grabbing at plates of various crostini as they sailed by me in the crowded room.

The highlight of this pre-dinner ritual was meeting and hanging out with Brian Griese and his lovely wife, Brook. We mostly talked about how much we loved eating at various Bonanno establishments (Bones is everyone's current favorite). Kathie and I filled them in on cheese making techniques that we learned, you guessed it, during a Bonanno cheese workshop at Luca a year ago.

The conversation also got around to hospitals and Katherine's appreciation for all Griese does in the fight against breast cancer. We let him know that tapes of the playoff games from the Broncos' second winning super bowl year went a long way toward helping Katherine heal after her first bout with breast cancer and a lumpectomy. They were lovely people.

But let's talk about the food. We sat at a great table next to the huge front picture window with two women who were good friends of Frank and Jacqueline. The place was packed and the only complaint I have is that one of the women sitting at the table next to ours had a laugh that would etch glass and it pealed over the room almost constantly. We made a few good jokes about wanting to drink what the people at her table were drinking, but the jokes wore thin after a while. One gentleman at the table even made a point to apologize for this strange woman's (he swore he had never seen her before) behavior.

But the din emanating from that table did little to diminish the class of Luca. Gray walls with burgundy accents, magnificent oils on the walls alternating with polished mirrors, a central table for wines and breads, beautiful table wear, and impeccable service all combine to make Luca perhaps the most sophisticated dining experience in town. Mizuna is equally beautiful, but it feels more like having dinner at your best friend's house, that is if that best friend is the best chef in the western United States.

The smoothness with which the dinner was served and the truly interesting wine choices did a lot to support the star of the show, Frank Bonanno's cooking.

After a quick glass of prosecco, a chilled lobster salad dressed with fava beans, crab and fennel arrived. It was the shape of a healthily sized crab cake, but it was all lobster meat barely held together by the lightest dressing and smeared across the plate was a dilled yogurt. This lovely starter was paired with a light pinot grigio. I noticed that when the first course was served, the table with the laugher seemed to quiet down a little.

Next came a spinach sformatino topped with a poached egg and garnished with pancetta and a lightly sauteed radish slice. After I took my first bite, every one at the table nodded agreement with me when I said "I could eat this all day." Ryan Hardy, a chef from Vail, brought these perfect eggs with the thick orange yolks with him for the occasion. Amazing. This revelation of a dish was paired with a slightly heavier chardonnay. A nice combination.

Agnolotti of buffalo milk tallegio and braised veal filling paired with a wonderful barbera was the pasta course. This was my least favorite dish, with the pasta a little heavy for my taste, which is to actually say that this was the only course that did not make me feel like I ought to pay some sort of homage to the chef. I know this is heresy for all followers of Frank Bonanno, but I really think the pasta that Kathie and I make is consistently better than the pasta at Luca.

The secondi was an delicious and surprisingly large portion of spring lamb loin served on a vidalia onion polenta with a kind of carrot and fennel foam. This was paired with the best wine of the night, a barbaresca that was just bursting with fruit and velvetiness.

Keegan Gerhard of D-Bar Desserts and food network host took care of dessert. Three oven roasted strawberries served on a kind of fruity cracker next to an almond ice milk were paired with a light and sweet roseish wine. I didn't pick up on the grape. It was just the right kind of dessert to end an extravaganza like this, a great mouth feel with the ice milk and the tartness of the strawberries were perfectly set off by the wine.

It was a happy crowd of friends that slowly filtered out onto 7th and Grant that evening. Thank you Children's Hospital for all the good that you do and thank you Frank and Jacqueline for the same.