Casa Luca

We had a dinner with J's parents at Casa Luca, an Italian restaurant in Washington, DC.

I believe this was the latest restaurant that Fabio Trabocchi opened. We have been Fiola Mare, another restaurant that he runs in DC. Honestly, foods at Fiola Mare wasn't so memorable. However, I have seen many good reviews and interesting articles about Casa Luca, and wanted to try.

My drink was Ginger Snap. It was a mocktail made with persimmon, walnut syrup, pomegranate, lemon and ginger beer. It looked pretty and tasted lovely.

Bread with olive oil. The bread was rustic and simply tasty. 

J and I shared two appetizers. One was Main lobster and farro salad. I appreciated the generous lobster meat. Farro salad was pretty good although the entire dish was a little salty for me.

The other appetizer was shrimp tempura. The fried whole shrimps were so light and crispy from the head to the tail. J's father had shrimp tempura, too.

J's mother had beef tartare for appetizer. It seemed that she enjoyed it.

Beef tartare came with some grilled breads.

J's parents shared two pasta dishes. One was gnocchi with white pork Ragu, morel mushrooms, and Formaggio di Fossa, a sheep's milk cheese from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. J's mother said it was her favorite dish of the day. 

The other pasta dish they shared was Fettuccine Nero with tiger prawns, Louisiana crawfish and clams in Amalfi style. It looked tasty!

J and I shared a whole dover sole. Our waiter carefully removed filets, separating from bones, and made two neat plates on our table.   

Sautéed garlicky spinach and tomatoes was a companion of the fish filets. 

At that point, we were pretty much full. However, when I saw the dessert cart, it was easy for me to find some space in my tummy. I wish I could nibble all sweets there. Everything looked wonderful. 

J and I picked a polenta cake with limoncello syrup. The cake was topped with Italian meringue and toasted pine nuts. Wow, this cake was amazing. It was my best dish of the day. In fact, J agreed with me! The cake was a winner!

Overall, the dinner was very nice. Will we come back again? It wasn't that much impressive, unfortunately. There are many other restaurants in DC we are interested in, we would like to try a new place if we were in DC. If we were invited to the restaurant somehow by someone, of course, we would love to dine there again. I would surely order another slice of their great polenta cake.