Subterranean chews

Maria & Michael's takes over the basement of City Lights

Maria & Michael's City Lights Pub and Ristorante
395 Grafton Street, Worcester 752-6660
Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. (Mon. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. for take-out only)
Major credit cards
Full bar
Not handicap accessible

by Jim Johnson

I'd delayed visiting City Lights for some time. From the outside, it looked like your basic nondescript Worcester bar that served pub food. The last thing I wanted was bad food, smoke, and ESPN.

Then I heard that City Lights had renovated its basement in November for Maria & Michael's. More important, I heard the food was great.

With a friend in tow, I recently headed to Grafton Street. A peek upstairs revealed that City Lights is your basic nondescript Worcester bar. Downstairs, however, it's cozy, quiet, and smoke-free with top-notch cuisine, reasonable prices, and friendly service.

According to our server, City Lights and Maria & Michael's share the same menu, and Maria & Michael's prepares the food for both upstairs and downstairs. City Lights has been designated the smoking area.

We eagerly tried to identify the aromas that filled the air: the sweet herbs in simmering sauce, pungent puffs of olive oil sputtering in iron skillets, crushed garlic . . . everywhere.

The power of suggestion led us to thick slices of garlic bread. It's no surprise that Maria & Michael's makes its own bread. Toasted perfectly, the bread was crisp outside, soft inside, and coated with more garlic than butter.

Our second appetizer was even more flavorful, albeit a bit too hot for my tablemate. We'd ordered stuffed cherry peppers, and one bite had my friend fanning her mouth and grabbing for the bread. Served in an almost sweet vinaigrette along with a rich marinara sauce, the peppers were warm in temperature, too. Each was filled with a lean slice of prosciutto and a chunk of silky romano cheese. Strips of sweet pepper decorated the plate, which I cleaned in moments.

After the peppers, I found the stuffed mushrooms a bit bland. Still, they were fresh and moist, piled high with herbed-breadcrumb stuffing, and topped with cheese. With some marinara sauce from the peppers, the flavor was perfect.

Entrées are heavy on seafood, including stuffed salmon and sole picatta. The menu is dominated, not surprisingly, by Italian dishes such as eggplant parmesan, fettucine Alfredo, fettucine alla carbonara, and stuffed manicotti. The words fresh and homemade are used liberally and -- quite probably -- accurately. Most sounded totally tempting. Prices ranged a few bucks either side of $10.

Her taste buds now back to normal, my friend took a bite from a massive chunk of lasagna. It was cool in the middle, but a quick return to the oven fixed that. Crammed with cheese, sauce, and sweet sausage, the lasagna was surprisingly light, perhaps due to almost fluffy cheese. The sauce was rich, the pasta firm, the flavor bold. Add to that a colorful presentation of parsley strewn in a large white bowl, and it was about as good as it gets -- at least for $7.50.

I ordered broiled fish ($10.95), served as requested without butter and still surprisingly moist. The fish was fresh and flaky, the shrimp were sweet, and the breadcrumb dressing was seasoned just right. A large bowl was filled with homemade cavatelli -- those tiny, dense dumplings -- and sauce.

For dessert, we ordered tiramisu ($3.75) and cheesecake ($3.50). "I don't know what it's supposed to taste like, but it's great," exclaimed my tablemate, as she took her very first bite of this once-trendy dessert. The cheesecake was velvety and light -- thank goodness!

Dinner for two, including a bottle of San Nicola 1995, came to $54.

I returned for lunch a few days later, since I really wanted to try the sautéed mixed grill with chicken, sirloin, and shrimp over pasta. Priced at $11.95 for dinner, it cost $6.95 for lunch for the same huge bowl. The meats had been given a light flour coating, grilled just right, and tossed with cavatelli. I'd asked for as little fat as possible, and the chef kept the cheese, butter, and cream to an absolute minimum. Still, I couldn't have imagined the red sauce any richer or better.

Other dinner entrées are also served at lunch at reduced prices. Lunch items also include 25 sandwiches, deep-dish pizza, and calzones.

Service on both occasions was attentive, friendly, and knowledgeable -- especially at lunch, when my server was also the chef.