All in the Famiglia
By B.A. Nilsson

Casa Mia Ristorante

385 Route 9W, Glenmont, 463-4331. Serving Tue-Fri 11-10, Sat 4-11, Sun 4-9. AE, DC, MC, V.

Cuisine: classic Italian

Entrée Price Range: $10 (pasta with marinara) to $23 (12-oz. filet mignon)

Ambiance: pleasant and comfortable

Try as they might, the chain rest aurants still can’t duplicate what makes a neighborhood Italian place work. Casa Mia is a case in point, a restaurant that has operated for a dozen years along what’s now a booming stretch of Route 9W, with big-box stores nearby and the oppressive specter of a Chili’s just across the street.

“It hasn’t really affected us,” a server said when I asked about the new neighbor. “We’re still as busy as ever. I don’t know who goes there.”

Consistency and reliability are key factors in the success of any restaurant. You can as easily predict the style of an Italian- restaurant menu as you can the Applebee’s-Chili’s-Ruby Tuesday type of place; what’s unknown is how well the food will live up to those expectations.

Casa Mia offers no disappointments. It’s not the world’s lightest fare—my dish of stuffed mushrooms swam in so rich a buttery sauce that the bread practically dived in after it—but it sure is satisfying. Were I in the neighborhood more frequently, I could see making regular visits.

Very classic dishes dominate the menu, but seafood is noted as a specialty, so I cast aside a hankering for something sautéed in a wine sauce and instead opted for a special of stuffed salmon ($19)—seafood stuffed, not surprisingly.

Served over rice were two good-sized filets wrapped around a predictable, bread-rich filling, all of it topped with a creamy lobster sauce that threatened to herald a total excess of flavors. Yet the components worked together, the white rice particularly good for spreading the impact of that sauce.

The main dining room reveals its charm after a little study, once you notice that the table colors—they’re draped in white and dressed with green—are picked up by the window curtains, the pinkish flowers on which echo the shading of the walls. Dark wood paneling and a series of midroom columns add some intimacy to the dining experience.

Upon the entering the restaurant, you’ll see a roly-poly chef statue bearing a specials board; veer right and there’s a large bar and some tables in a room beyond. More than likely, you’ll be seated in the room I described, which is to the left.

Twelve years is a long lifetime for a restaurant these days, but, as chef-owner Ray Cecunjanin explains, the family has been in the business for a lot longer than that. And what a family! They’ve spread a dynasty of similar restaurants throughout the Northeast, beginning in Bridgeport, Conn., where Mario’s I still thrives on that city’s Main Street. Locally, family members also run Mercato’s in Delmar, and they have places further north in Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.

“The menu will be about 70 percent the same from place to place,” Cecunjanin explains, “but each place operates independently.” So the recipes, including sauces and baking, have stayed in the family, passed from member to member as each new eatery takes shape. The chains can only dream of such a legacy.

Consistency also requires a good buying strategy, which accounts for the excellent cut of meat in the veal Napoli ($17), another special, but one that shows up often. “I pay a little extra for my veal,” Cecunjanin explains, “because it has to be tender. You have to be able to cut it with a fork.”

It’s paired with sausage slices and mushrooms in a wine-rich sauce, a simple dish that marries its component threesome well. We have noted with some dismay a proliferation of too-chewy veal medallions; this is how it should be. A side of pasta rounds out the dish.

Order an entrée of pasta and you’ll pay from $10 for a marinara-topped serving to $14 for a clam sauce or carbonara. Add the salad and bread that come with the meals and you might well be set for dinner.

Many of those dishes are meatless; they’re joined by a quartet of entrées on another menu page specifically touted as vegetarian, including a $13 vegetable lasagna.

That’s not the one we sampled, though. The same price gets you the classic casserole layered with meat and cheese, about as complete a meal as you can find in so compact a form. Even though other baked pasta dishes like ricotta-stuffed cannelloni and manicotti are available ($12 each), I’m firmly in the lasagna camp.

It may be true, as my wife insists, that I’ll like anything with cheese melted in or on top of it; still, the spedini appetizer ($8) was a winner not only because it gives you triangular wedges of breaded and fried cheese (oh, sin of sins!) but also because it’s served with a compote of mushrooms, prosciutto, capers, olives and roasted peppers that itself could have been an appetizer.

There’s plenty more to choose from, what with a page and a half of chicken, veal, beef and seafood items, but you’ve dined in this kind of place before and know exactly what to expect. What puts Casa Mia on a par with the best of them is its food quality and friendly, efficient service—and the sense that there’s a family that loves food looking out for you.

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