Moonstruck

There really was a half-moon — a mezzaluna — in the starless sky on the cold night I first visited the downtown restaurant Mezzaluna.

The restaurant is across the street from the abandoned Jones Store, where display windows thick with dust have become billboards full of graffiti. Although I had advised her to park on the street, one of my dining companions, singer Queen Bey, had stowed her car a block south of the old Jones Store in a lot across from the Midland Theatre. I had trudged over to meet her, and then we’d walked back to Mezzaluna, which is on the first floor of the shiny, stainless steel Town Pavilion building.

“When I was a girl there was a Kresge’s here,” Queen said, looking right through the building and into her past. “And the smell of the chili dogs from the lunch counter was so good.” That lunch counter, along with the department stores and movie palaces that once lined this stretch of Main Street, is just a memory now. And if more people don’t discover Mezzaluna — the urban outpost of restaurateur Florin Mihailescu’s successful Lenexa restaurant of the same name — it may become a memory much faster than the long-forgotten King Joy Lo.

The Tuesday night I had dinner with Queen Bey and my friend Bob, we sat at the only occupied table in the entire restaurant. The long bar did a sprinkling of business, but the attractive dining room, with little votive candles flickering at all the tables, was quiet and sad. The place is so stylish, with shiny hardwood floors and tables cloaked in white linens, seeing it nearly empty is like watching the prettiest girl at the dance sit alone.

Things weren’t much better on a weekend night. While the three restaurants in the Crossroads art district several blocks to the south were packed, Mezzaluna had guests at only three tables. The food here is terrific, so what’s going on? Another attractive restaurant, a PB&J creation called City Seen, did not fare well at this same location in the late 1980s — it slipped into oblivion unseen. And the few remaining downtown hotel restaurants now have the unmistakable aroma of ennui: Unless there’s a big convention, play, performance, or cultural event downtown, there’s very little dinner business. A venerable restaurant, such as the nearby Italian Gardens, stays busy because its reputation for hearty, reasonably priced suppers and quick service is still its calling card. And it has valet parking, a distinct asset in downtown, where convenient parking is either nonexistent or absurdly expensive.

But Mezzaluna opened its doors three months ago with no small sense of risk. You can’t help but admire the scrappy courage it took to do that — and to create an elegant restaurant in an untrendy neighborhood occupied by casual joints, an ersatz deli or two, and a few chain operations.

Now, admittedly, the place is big on style and wonderful Italian dishes but short on charm. I saw the owner only once, and he was scowling behind the bar. The waiter on both of my visits was an attentive Romanian-born gentleman who approaches the tables with a surly wariness, as if he expects customers to be gangsters or KGB operatives. He’s a pro but takes awhile to warm up.

“Is the bread made here?” I asked, tearing open a yeasty, rustic-looking roll.

“Yeah,” he said, providing one of his more elaborate answers.

The young Czechoslovakian lady in the sparkly blouse who serves as greeter, busgirl, and backup waitress smiles like an angel and speaks little English, as I quickly discovered when I asked her which opera singer was crooning over the sound system.

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“Is it Pavarotti?” I asked.

She looked at me blankly, then left and returned with an answer. “It’s in the office,” she said solemnly.

Things lightened up a little as Queen Bey called the waiter and the young lady “baby,” which seemed to both confuse and delight them. “I do hope you have something like spaghetti on this menu,” she told the waiter.

“There’s a wonderful chicken dish, Pollo con Melle, that I tried here last week,” Bob interjected, trying to sell the Queen on chicken sauteed with fresh, tart apples in a pale, golden champagne sauce.

“Honey,” she said, looking at him as if he were mad. “I thought this was an Italian restaurant. How can I judge if it’s a good Italian restaurant if I don’t taste the spaghetti?”

She had a point. This may not be an Italian Gardens kind of classic (there’s no pizza, Roma bread and butter, or spumoni on the menu), but there is spaghetti, which is still the touchstone for any Italian restaurant in the States. In addition to the homemade ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese and fresh spinach or the bowtie pasta served with salmon in a light, pink tomato cream sauce, there’s a fancy version of basic spaghetti red: spaghetti al pomedore e basilico — pasta noodles with a fresh tomato and basil sauce.

“What? No meatballs?” Queen said, eyeing the waiter suspiciously.

“There is the Bolognese,” he shrugged.

“Yes,” said Bob, “it’s penne pasta with meat sauce.”

“I’ll have that,” said Queen, pointing a manicured finger at the table. “And some butter for this bread, baby. I like olive oil, but I need the real stuff too.”

At Mezzaluna, the food is the real stuff all the way around. Beautifully prepared salads, including a sassy Caesar with a piquant dressing and the best minestrone I’ve ever had — not beany water loaded with awful, earthy lentils and a dash of chopped onion but a giant bowl of savory broth, the color of a Tuscan wheatfield, filled with potatoes, carrots, celery, bits of tomato, and snippets of pasta. It can easily hold its own as a filling meal. After downing every last drop, I wanted to taste the ravioli piemontese — it’s not made with truffles, as it might be in its namesake region of northwest Italy, but stuffed with beef and sauteed with meaty porcini mushrooms in a brandy cream sauce that was so decadent, my head was spinning after the first bite.

Queen Bey got her penne pasta, heaped with a luscious sauce of beef and tomatoes. Bob chose another chicken dish: a tender breast sauteed with portabello mushrooms that he thought was good, even if he did spend much of the meal wishing he had splurged on the 12-ounce Kansas City strip sauteed with those same mushrooms and Piemonte Barolo wine.

I was eager to try the evening’s seafood special, a plate of fresh spinach sauteed in garlic with pink shrimp cooked scampi-style, in garlic and butter.

“Baby,” Queen said, “that dish looks so healthy. You want a bite of my spaghetti?”

“It’s penne!” I snapped, correcting her in a prissy manner that embarrassed even me. Bob rolled his eyes. I swallowed a mouthful of spinach, grateful that there weren’t any people at a nearby table who would have overheard me. Not that Queen cared. Penne, spaghetti? As long as it tasted good, baby, who gave a damn?

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The server returned to ask whether we wanted coffee or dessert. We were all too stuffed to move, but the Queen had a request: “Wrap up my spaghetti, baby. I’ll take the rest home with me.”

We then wrapped Queen up in her heavy coat and made our way to the door, giving a farewell glance at the empty tables, their candles like tiny beacons begging for attention.

“It’s so sad,” I said, stepping out into the cold December air. “It’s a wonderful restaurant. It just needs people to discover it.”

“I know it, baby,” Queen said, adjusting her turban. “Just like life in the music business.”

What’s that expression? The tune is twice as sweet when there are paying customers in the seats. Go make some memories at Mezzaluna.