.
Luigi's (2)
 Akron, Ohio       Date of Visit  08/15/14           http://www.luigisrestaurant.com

We were excited to try Luigi’s again. It seems to be the quintessence of Italian and pizza for the locals. The place is packed as always and the servers seems somewhere between pleasant and irritated. It’s a little cramped but most of the space is taken up with years of history and happily munching patrons.

Always a must is the tossed salad with cheese…or as it should be referred to the cheese with tossed salad. Any pizza place could stack up a salad with handfuls of cheese but the vinaigrette is designed to cut through all of the cheese, making everything bright and cheery. We ordered the fried zucchini, which arrived in hot planks with a seriously chunky marinara. Fairly average, but fried vegetables remain awesome.
 

Our pizza needed another minute or two in the oven to finish the bottom of the crust. Their crust is really tasty…probably more so if it is browned all the way across the bottom. While the bottom needed a bit more bake, the edges had gloriously singed the cheese to a crunchy, salty brownness which is delicious. The toppings are pretty standard but do their job. Not being a local, I still find Luigi’s to be good but not extraordinary.
 

It’s been years since I have visited this Akron Landmark and given our latest little project it seemed a good time to return. Sneaking in at the end of a lunch crowd, we were seated much faster than I expected, as I have never been to Luigi’s without a significant wait. The prices are higher than I had remembered, years gone by will do that to you. We tried a couple of items from the lunch menu which contains a number of deals.

Italian Bread
 

The lunch menu items are definitely scaled down from their regular menu cousins but are constructed of the same materials. The pizza sits atop a medium thick crust which is the epitome of the word crust. Sharp and crisp, oil and a hot bake deliver an unmistakable crunch between your teeth. The sauce is very earthy and dusky with a balancing sweetness which becomes something different and unique to Luigi’s when paired with the cheese. Tomato is a fruit and this cheesy combo brings out a twang in the tomato that in some way brings to the palate a sense of fruitiness.

Steph reported the baked rigatoni was not overdone and mushy, the bane of baked pastas. She enjoyed the meatball, which I found solid but of a single note, which was a healthy dose of garlic. Not a bad thing, but I typically expect a couple of different layers. The sauce, cheese, and bread slurry was tasty, but I found the sausage less than interesting, in need of salt and those layers of flavor again. Pizza certainly seems to be the way to go here, a very unique blending of taste and all of the textures you expect.

Baked Rigatoni
 

Open-faced Sausage Sandwich