L is for Laudisio
Twenty Ninth Street's local anchor
by David Miller (buzz@boulderweekly.com)

Laudisio
www.laudisio.com
hours: 11a.m. to 11p.m. daily
1710 29th Street, #1076
303-442-1300

One thing Antonio Laudisio can do better than almost anyone is build restaurants. It's in his blood. His ancestors learned to cook and bake on the Amalfi coast in southern Italy. His parents, in the first wave of Italian immigrants, opened a bakery under the Brooklyn Bridge. In 1953, they moved to Miami and opened a small restaurant. Antonio was 11. He and his three brothers—Agostino, Jr., Raimondo and Leonardo—all worked there together, sharing a single pair of dancing shoes their mother gave them, so only one of them would be gone from work at a time.

Now, 50-plus years later, Antonio gives a quick tour of the new Laudisio––L's. He starts in the 6,000-bottle wine cellar, then crosses the wine bar—high-ceilinged and bright—and stops at the wood-burning oven.

"See all the circles?" he asks. "Everything is designed around this core."

Like concentric rings, the wine bar, pizza bar and food bar radiate outward from the hearth, followed by the banquette, dining area and entryway. Open seating and views of the Flatirons make for a grand, theatrical setting, while warm lighting and dark wood accents lend an intimacy to each table.

This new site—the high-profile corner of Canyon and 29th in the Twenty Ninth Street shopping district—seems the opposite of the original Laudisio, with its modest location in North Boulder.

Despite accolades (voted Best of Boulder 10 years in a row), loyal clientele, and nearly 20 years of business, the original Laudisio became, in Antonio's words, "lackluster" after 9/11, especially in light of the continued success of his other restaurant, The Med, which he started with Joe and Peggy Romano in 1993.

"Diners are in search of a different experience today," Antonio says. "They are seeking out restaurants that are fast and casual... with an upbeat contemporary ambience."

Antonio closed the old Laudisio in September 2006, and then, with partner Richard Schaden, opened the reinvented L's a month later. Since then, the challenge has been creating this different experience without losing the intimacy cherished by longtime clientele.

Creating intimacy begins in the kitchen. Walking down the hotline, Antonio explains, "This is a European-style kitchen, almost like a teaching kitchen." Designed with K Damato, the facility has dual, interconnected rows of oven/grill stations, enabling chefs to work together, feeding plates toward the pickup line.

This afternoon, kitchen manager Luke Wilson prepares spaghetti for the crew.

"It's different than other kitchens, more laid back, because of the good design," says Luke, who's worked in such restaurants as The Flagstaff House.The kitchen is fully displayed—adding "theatre," as Antonio describes it, as well as allowing chefs to "absorb that dining room energy, and give back."

And as in the original Laudisio, chefs interact directly with guests.

"That was my favorite part of the old restaurant," says sous-chef Nathan Watkins, "being able to work the grill literally three feet away from people at the bar."

The new restaurant "is attempting that same thing," Antonio says. "You got chefs expediting—they're walking and talking to you."

Finally, the wait staff plays the role of maintaining what manager Leslie Angus calls, "a peace tableside. No matter how stressful or busy it gets, the guests should never know any of it."

Overall, Antonio finds that the old clientele loves the new location.

"A lot of customers we'd see two, three times a week there are in here almost every night. They like the parking; they come straight upstairs even with the bad weather," he says.

Hostess Jenaka Ford also notices the original Laudisio crowd, but adds, "a lot of college-age kids come here."

As always, the menu centers on locally grown organic food and classic Italian cooking where "Mama could feel at home."

"You can come in after a movie and have a pizza, salad and a nice glass of wine without breaking the bank," Antonio says. "Or you can come in the back, drink a thousand-dollar bottle of wine, have white truffles on a risotto and a veal chop that's as good as anywhere you'd get in the world."

As Twenty Ninth Street continues to fill in with stores, new people will discover L's. In the meantime, it remains a destination restaurant. People come there first to eat, then shop.

"I think we're the local anchor," Antonio says. "We're doing the business that we're doing because of our support in the community."

And this, for Antonio, is the bottom line. Not how much business he does, but the community he supports and vice versa. It's always been that way, from the first restaurant in Miami, where, after his father died, his brother Raimondo (who would later help open Laudisio and The Med) began finding old Italian men to come out of retirement and teach them how to cook. It's the family tradition continuing with his wife Patricia, their daughter Lucia—who helps with bookkeeping, marketing and promotion—and son Tavio, L's Pizzaoilo.

Antonio nods toward the exhibition kitchen, the future site of cooking classes. "This is a kitchen Raimondo would'a dreamt about," he says. "A teaching kitchen."

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