D'Angelo's

This Twinsburg hot spot offers upscale dining—at a family price.

By: Olivia Bloom
Date: 03/05/2010
I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on all this,” I told Paul D’Angelo as I dug into a plate of polenta studded with smoked bacon.  “Mmph,” I mumbled as the flavors exploded in my mouth. A waitress sailed by with a plate—more like a platter, actually—of lacy-looking deep-fried calamari with some kind of creamy dipping sauce.  I scanned the menu. The sauce was lemon-chili aioli and the huge portion was an appetizer.

I’m in love. D’Angelo’s is truly one of the hidden gems of Northeast Ohio. The five-year-old restaurant is located next to a doughnut shop in a small shopping strip between Twinsburg and Hudson, directly across Darrow Road (state route 91) from where the new Humane Society of Greater Akron will be.  Anyone who has driven by D’Angelo’s without stopping is in for a surprise. You’d never guess that inside you’ll find soft lighting and white tablecloths, suave pastas and thick steaks—at prices that are surprising, too.  None of the dinner entrees is over $20 except one, the twin filet mignons with Portobello mushroom sauce for $20.99.

The restaurant won’t remain undiscovered for long, thanks to that polenta and calamari. Buzz is already building about the talented new chef, Aaron Murphy, who has been wowing diners with his modern take on Italian classics.  Murphy has cooked with such local culinary stars as Shawn Monday and Brandt Evans, and it shows.

The restaurant is a lovely setting for Murphy’s food. Two dining rooms are separated by a comfy bar, which also has booths for dining. Both dining rooms have soft lighting and soothing mocha-colored walls. Paul’s wife, Donna, has decorated the rooms with a mix of contemporary and old-world elegance. The clean lines of the simple wood tables and teardrop lights are juxtaposed with antique sideboards and floor-to-ceiling drapes. Beaded paneling, gilt-framed mirrors and candles make the rooms feel warm, upscale and intimate.

The handsome photos on the walls of the main dining room tell the story of the food. Wedding portraits of an extended Italian family march down the room, dating from 1932. The centerpiece is a mural-sized parchment family tree that chronicles generation after generation, stretching back in time to 1881.

You can imagine the solemn couples in the black-and-white photos—Paul’s grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles—breaking into smiles and heaping their plates with pastas and roast meats at all those Sicilian wedding feasts.

Most of D’Angelo’s original menu came from this older generation of great cooks, and family members still operate restaurants in St. Louis and Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

The Twinsburg restaurant is a family operation, too. Paul and Donna oversee the dining room and order supplies, their son, Paul Jr., and Paul’s brother, Sam, work in the kitchen, and another brother, Jimmy, runs their more
casual Casa D’Angelo restaurant in Macedonia.

“Everything about us is family,” says Paul. (When the D’Angelo clan gets together on Christmas Eve they have to use the restaurant because there are 80 of them, Paul says, laughing.)

Family loyalty extends to the recipes Paul’s grandmother brought over from Palermo, Italy. Just because
D’Angelo’s has a new chef doesn’t mean the chicken Palermo and pasta verdure will be retired. The old and the new will coexist side by side on a new menu that will debut in May.

Regulars probably would skin them alive if they did away with the chicken Palermo, on one or another D’Angelo’s restaurant menu for 21 years. Ditto for the heavenly pasta verdure, a deeply flavored pasta dish of fettuccine and broccoli with cream, ricotta and Parmesan.

“That’s my grandmother D’Angelo’s recipe,” Paul says as I appreciatively slurp up the noodles. “We call it the ‘white side’ because it can be ordered as a side dish.”

I eye my portion, heaped in a cereal-size bowl. “This is the entree size, right?”

Wrong.

“We’re big-portion people here,” Paul explains. “Our motto is you’re never going to walk out of here hungry.
We’re not going to let you.”

Warily, I nod at the big house salad I’ve barely touched. “Large?”

“No, that’s the small one,” Paul grins.

I hope the carry-out boxes, like the salad, come in small, medium and large. The salad is too good to waste, even one bite. It features crisp greens, croutons, bacon, shredded mozzarella and a get-down homemade Italian dressing that is positively addictive. It looks like a nice, simple salad but you can’t stop eating it. A lot of other people apparently feel the same way, because it’s one of the most popular items on the menu.

The portion sizes of chef Aaron’s contemporary dishes, offered on a list of daily specials until the new menu debuts, are smaller but not by much.

“This is the way people want to eat now,” says Donna as she lifts a forkful of some incredible lobster-crab risotto.
A big mound of the risotto is surrounded by perfectly seared sea scallops and topped with a spicy tomato concasse.

She offers a bite. I don’t know which is better, the risotto or grandma D’Angelo’s pasta verdure. I’m glad both will be on the new menu.
 
“People still want to go out and eat but with gas prices being high and the economy being bad, it’s hard to do that,” says Paul. “Here, you can get an upscale meal in an upscale setting at a family price.”
In truth, you’d be hard-pressed to find better food at any price.

D’Angelo’s Italian Restaurant is at 7995 Darrow Road in Twinsburg. Hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 4 to 10 p.m. Saturday and 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday. The phone is 330-963-0603. The website is www.casadangelo.com/dangelos.htm.

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