Lexington, KY - Unassumingly tucked behind Planet Thai on Nicholasville Road, close to the New Circle Road interchange, this family-owned restaurant boasts one of the largest, if not the largest, Italian menu offerings in Lexington. And more importantly, the menu items are delizioso.
The setting in Paisano's is pleasant and comfortable, with low lights, unobtrusive partitions between some of the tables and light mandolin flourishes wafting from the overhead speakers. Some Sinatra standards can also be recognized, and appreciated.
The wine menu is ample, but not overwhelming. There is a healthy selection of reds, whites and blushes - over 30 in total priced by the glass or bottle. Neither my dinner guest nor I am well versed in a vintner's trade, but our host helped us make a selection based on our tastes and menu selection (according to whether we were going to order red or white sauce). He suggested the Ecco Domani Merlot, which wasn't anywhere near the most expensive selection - always a good sign.
The victuals menu, on the other hand, was very overwhelming, and we had to tell our waitress on more than one occasion that we couldn't make up our minds. The appetizers were priced between $5 and $9 ($14 for the combo) and included a roster of fried goodness: cheese, artichoke hearts, potatoes, onion slices, calamari and banana peppers. I took pity on my guest and refrained from the banana peppers, opting for the calamari.
The rest of the menu, all six pages of it, is broken down into standard pasta selections, chicken, veal, vegetarian and seafood dishes, and a helping of chef specials, which included enticing items like Paisan's Chicken (made with artichoke, black olives and sun-dried tomatoes) and grilled sausage with bell peppers (made with homemade sausage).
Pasta selections (priced between $10 and $12) included items such as carbonara, cannelloni, manicotti, lasagna and "Spaghetti as You Like It" - where you pick the sauce and noodle type. Chicken dishes (priced between $13 and $15) included chicken cacciatora, primavera, marsala, picatta and roma, among other items. The veal menu was very similar to the chicken selections, and the seafood portion had items such as crab and shrimp alfredo and linguini pesatore. Other menu items included pizzas and salads, such as antipasto.
I ordered the veal cacciatora, which came with slices of veal sautÈed with green peppers, onions and mushrooms in a marinara sauce served over linguini, and my guest ordered the chicken roma, a chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms, broccoli and ricotta in a red or white sauce, accompanied by spaghetti with marinara.
The calamari was lightly breaded and spongy, not rubbery, and very good, and the stuffed chicken was a sumptuous assortment of flavors. My meal was excellent, with big, hearty chunks of meat and vegetables, but the moment I tasted the spaghetti, I immediately knew I had made a terrible mistake. Why order something exotic just for the sake of trying something more expensive on somebody else's dime (i.e. this magazine's publisher) when you know deep down the bread-and-butter selections (i.e. the spaghetti in an Italian restaurant) are going to be the best offerings? Why?
For dessert we split a serving of spumoni (Italian ice cream), which was hard to get down on an already full stomach, and each had a cup of coffee. The bill, prior to tipping, came to $58.80, which included two glasses of wine, an appetizer, two entrees, a dessert and two cups of coffee - a fair price to pay given the gluttons we had made of ourselves.
Also, to make certain that I tell you all, each entrÈe comes with a choice of soup or salad as well as handmade rolls. The rolls, perhaps used to sop up some spare marinara sauce, makes a visit worthwhile in itself.