Great Italian at Da Guido

Luciano Pavarotti’s tenor fills the air, sailing over waves of sauteed veal scallopine and beef tenderloin grilled with garlic and rosemary.

It’s an intoxicating combination, and with a glass of Ripasso on an autumn evening, the dining room at Da Guido seems like a fine place to relax.

Gliding between the sounds and the scents is the Roman-tinged baritone of Guido himself, alternately chatting with customers in the dining room and calling out orders in the kitchen. Guido Panara is a chef with a presence — and a voice — that carries through his restaurant.

It has been more than 25 years since Panara arrived in Calgary from Rome via a short stint in Montreal. As a young, Roman-trained chef, he was looking for a place to call his own and he felt the personality of Calgary matched his. So he opened his first restaurant in a small strip mall on Centre Street just above 20th Avenue North. The timing and location were inspired.

At the time, Italian food was the big culinary trend in Calgary. We couldn’t get enough cannelloni, veal piccata and scampi in butter sauce, preferably with a tall-necked bottle of Chianti.

Panara situated his restaurant equidistant from three of the major Italian restaurants of the day — Mamma’s, La Casa D’Italia and Lombardo’s — helping make the area a hotbed for the cuisine.

Panara was the young buck at the time, and while the original owners of the other restaurants have all retired, Panara soldiers on well into his third decade.

After a few successful years in his first rented location, Panara decided to buy land nearby and build his own restaurant. The result was a double-dining-room building that has the appearance of an Italian villa.

Over the years it has gained a patina of age, and the tiny cypress trees Panara planted have grown higher than the roof. Inside, the two rooms create a comfortable, private tone, with soft leather chairs and beige linens. It works for a romantic dinner for two or a celebratory party for 100, occasionally at the same time.

Well-conceived with a foyer that can convert into a third dining room when necessary, the restaurant looks as good today as when it opened in 1990.

And so does Panara. He is a happy man. And it comes through in his food. Over the course of a meal, we have three different tomato preparations — tomatoes topping bruschetta, tomatoes bathing a bowl of penne in a rustic, gutsy presentation and tomatoes elegantly coating a slab of fresh, pan-roasted halibut. All are perfect for their respective dish.

Panara’s cooking is like that. He shrugs at the mention of the four risotti on his menu. “I can do 50 different kinds of risotto,” he says. “Whatever you like.”

If it’s not on the menu, he’s happy to whip up a favourite dish. Not that his menu is small: 16 appetizers, four soups, four salads, the risotti, 13 pastas, 17 beef, veal, fish and poultry dishes, and an additional catch-all page of nine “Specialties of the Chef.”

And it’s all Panara. He has help in the kitchen, but every dish is his. If he’s not around, the restaurant is closed.

The beauty of a menu such as his is that if you want a big pasta blowout, it’s there. Vegetarian? No problem. Seafood? Try the simple and beautifully prepared grigliata di pesce of prawns, scampi, scallops and salmon. Light meal? Caesar salad and salmon in white wine sauce — lots of flavour and not heavy. Dessert? You bet. Our favourite is the big glass full of zabaglione, easily enough for two. Rich and delicate at the same time, lightly touched by Marsala wine — dense, sweet and luscious.

It doesn’t hurt that it is all served by pleasant, professional staff who help make dinner at Da Guido just that much better.

The Italian food “craze” and the tall-necked Chiantis of the 1980s have passed. And that’s good, because good food is good food, craze or not. So the best of the “old” places, like Da Guido, stand the test of time. A good bowl of pasta or a veal osso buco, when prepared right, can still be a revelation. Just like Pavarotti.

Da Guido is located at 2001 Centre St. N., 403-276-1365.