Inside Savannah’s new Lucia Pasta Bar at the former Starland Dairy
A first look inside the new Lucia Pasta Bar by owner/chef Kyle Jacovino at the former Starland Dairy.
Lucia Pasta Bar in Savannah, Georgia, combines Italian cooking techniques with local ingredients.Menu highlights include a romaine salad with tonnato sauce, woodfired clams, and beet scarpinocc pasta.
The traditional philosophy of Italian cooking highlights simplicity, letting the seasonal ingredients of the local land define its flavors. When restaurants in America try to replicate this, the Italian nature is often lost, as the ingredients at our disposal here have many differences to those overseas. Kyle Jacovino, a Savannahian prophet of Italian cuisine, rejects the norm and stays local to Georgia’s agriculture with Italian techniques at his side, embodying the Italian kitchen not in its exact ingredients, but in its practices. His newly opened Lucia Pasta Bar in the Starland District’s refurbished Starland Dairy is an interactive showcase of his masterful approach to Italian food.
The layout of the restaurant is remarkably attractive, making the most of the former dairy’s form while incorporating a bit of modernity with tiles and a curved pasta bar. But I’ve grown partial to the allure of the kitchen, a tightly packed open line that makes the most of the reserved space behind the bar. Standing tall beside the pasta station’s boiler and across from the kitchen’s pass is a Gianni Acunto pizza oven—a lovely centerpiece for customers to marvel as they eat a mortadella pie. On the other side of Lucia’s pasta boiler is an attraction for those of the kitchen industry: a squiggly-lined open burner stovetop with a “piano” (a slot extending from a stove that holds small pans of tools and salt). A testament to the cleanliness of the line, the cooks wipe down this piano between every sauce they prepare.
The first dish to hit my small nook of the bar is Lucia’s romaine lettuce. The salad is tossed in a pungent red wine vinaigrette and topped with tonnato sauce, parm and pangrattato for a bit of Southern Italian crunch. The tonnato is perfectly smooth, as if blended and then passed through a chinois sieve, and is far from overly fishy—just enough tuna for texture and anchovy for umami. It also offsets the piercing sourness of the vinaigrette that coats the folded lettuces before being simply piled into a bowl. Along with the other components, the pangrattato is simple, not asking for much attention besides a light crunch in the crevasses of the romaine.
Next are the woodfired clams, filled with ‘nduja butter and roasted off on a sizzle tray next to pies in the pizza oven. The dish achieves the promise of exclusively fresh, local and timely ingredients, as these young clams are harvested on Sapelo Island on Georgia’s coast. The texture of the clams is tender and buttery, inflated by the woodfire heat and topped with pangrattato. I must say though, even though the texture steals the show, that the ‘nduja flavor is hard to find in some, and they all could use a healthy pinch of salt. After the punchiness of the salad’s salt level, I’m left hanging a bit by the lack of seasoning on these shells.
The beet scarpinocc, likely a less common menu item alongside staples like Bolognese and arrabiata, looks familiar. Its accompaniments (balsamic, chevre, spiced pecans) resemble those of a classic roasted beet salad—a dish that has become ubiquitous in the American culinary scene. Lucia’s take, though, nestles beet puree in the center of delicate scarpinocc, a shoe-shaped pasta pocket. The base of goat cheese sauce is rich and becomes sweet as it is mixed with syrupy, aged balsamic vinegar. The finishing touch of Georgia pecans leans further into Lucia’s local ties, and equally further into the flavors of a beet salad. What a refreshing idea is to work these flavors into an entrée. It seamlessly fits Jacovino’s take on Italian cooking ideals. All I might wish is that the sauce and the filling of the scarpinocc be hotter.
Considering the mastery of Lucia’s homemade pasta, I found it impossible to avoid the allure of their cannoli with changing fillings and shells made at Vittoria, Jacovino’s other culinary endeavor: a pizzeria at the Starland Yard. The panna cotta was equally enticing. I opted for classic mascarpone to fill my cannoli, which I noticed was filled to order (a very good sign). The shell was lightly tapped on each end, one end with chocolate and the other with orange zest and pistachio. The panna cotta, topped with biscotti crumbs and Amarena cherries (an Italian cherry often soaked in a clove syrup) is light, and a great way to end a meal that has flavor teeming from every mouthful.
Jacovino has created something special here in the heart of Starland: an Italian menu laced with true Italian philosophy. Simplicity in flavor and in practice are a hard thing to pull off in this industry, especially in a young kitchen, but Lucia has done so nonetheless.
Dining and Cooking