La Piazza in Melville: The rush to capellini cakes
The fried capellini cakes at La Piazza in Melville are served over a pink tomato sauce. (April 22, 2013) Credit: Newsday Erica Marcus
Perusing the lunch menu today at La Piazza in Melville, I was immediately drawn to the capellini cakes ($11), described as “golden-fried pasta cakes, stuffed with green peas, Parma prosciutto, mozzarella, over pink sauce.”
How could those be bad? They sound like the fried capellini balls at King Umberto in Elmont, one of the tastiest morsels on Long Island. I ordered the appetizer as soon as the server showed up to ask what drinks we would like.
The cakes were terrific. Imagine arancini (deep-fried rice balls) with angel-hair pasta instead of rice. The rest of our lunch was good, too: a big, fresh Mediterranean salad of romaine, olive, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese ($10.50), a prosciutto-arugula pizza with a tad too much truffle oil ($15) and a very respectable rigatoni all’Amatriciana ($15) which evinced real, rich porkiness and wasn’t just a marinara sauce with a little bacon thrown in.
La Piazza is at 512 Walt Whitman Rd., Melville, 631-425-0500.
