Tony, Tony, Tony

If you want to know what a small town Kansas City really is, throw a name at Tony Ferrara. Chances are the 49-year-old restaurateur has met, waited on, cooked for, hired, fired or otherwise worked with the person. It’s “Six Degrees of Tony”: Ferrara either knows someone you know or knows someone who knows the person you know.

So the primary charm of Tony Ferrara’s Italian Ristorante isn’t the food but its bouncy owner-chef. The tan, good-natured Ferrara has all the charisma of Frank Sinatra in Pal Joey. And like that character, who wanted to open a place where society nobs could sip vino with hoi polloi, Ferrara and his wife, Barbara, have turned two spacious dining areas in an ugly suburban strip mall into a hip hangout. Tony’s always there, working the room.

And the native of Kansas City’s northeast has a lot of good stories to tell. He’s been in the restaurant business since 1972, when his uncle, restaurateur Victor Fontana, gave him his first job at Fontana’s combination restaurant and dance joint, Walter Mitty’s. Five years later, when Fontana opened the glamorous Fanny’s — a restaurant wrapped around a disco floor — Tony was general manager.

“He was quite a looker and very smooth,” recalls my friend Zodie, who worked there. “He and Victor knew how to make each diner feel comfortable and special. This town needs more of that personal style. Now there are too many corporate restaurants treating customers like so much cattle.”

The first restaurant bearing Ferrara’s name, tucked into a little brick building in downtown Overland Park, lasted only from 1994 to 1996. (There’s a story about that spot too, but it’s better when Tony tells it.) The new place, open since last November, occupies the former Elbow Room in Lenexa — and retains much of that restaurant’s sleek interior design: shiny black tabletops, a curved glass-block bar, moody lighting. The Ferraras gave it a little brush of decor Italiano by filling the walls with family photographs and hauling in a heavy reproduction of an ancient Roman statue for the center of the main dining room.

The place doesn’t have the sophisticated cachet — or menu — of Lidia’s, Jasper’s or Il Trullo, but the food is hearty, homestyle Italian, based mostly on Fontana family recipes or dishes that Tony developed himself. For his signature “spidini” creations (adapted from the Italian spiedini, meaning brochette or shish kebab), lovingly broiled chunks of chicken come topped with an Alfredo sauce or a spicy tomato-based Diablo sauce or, best yet, smothered in a garlicky marinade of olive oil and lemon juice flecked with bits of black and red pepper.

This new Ferrara’s doesn’t offer deep-fried foods, so there’s no fried ravioli (a blessing, I say), and the tender calamari and veal Parmigiana are sautéed in a pan — so much the better. Although the appetizer list includes a traditional antipasti plate and a stuffed artichoke, I prefer the extraordinary mussels steamed in lemon juice, butter and garlic. Our order of shrimp sautéed in olive oil, parsley and garlic also vanished in a flash, and we all but inhaled the remaining sauce, sopping it up with hunks of soft Roma bread.

On one of my visits, I brought along my friend Carol, who didn’t inform me — or the waiter — until we squeezed into a booth that she was allergic to garlic.

“Why would you even agree to go to an Italian restaurant?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to cause a scene,” she said sweetly.

Happily for all of us, Tony miraculously thought to put a few garlic-free choices on his menu, including his superb house salad, a mix of chopped iceberg and romaine, crushed artichoke hearts, bits of purple onion and red pimento, a small handful of Parmigiano and lots of olive oil and vinegar. I could eat a truckload of the stuff.

Carol reveled in having to choose from fettuccine Alfredo, Fettuccine Maria (with chicken and spinach) or Fettuccine Katrina (basically Alfredo with shrimp). She decided on the Alfredo, a decadent dish of noodles laden with thick cream, butter and Parmigiano. I grabbed a forkful for myself and sat there for a moment, basking in its richness. Carol nibbled away in a ladylike fashion, showing me how she learned to twirl a fork at her sorority house.

No sorority would have had me, the way I plowed through a plate of Veal Saltimbocca (fittingly, the Italian translation is “jump in the mouth”), even though it was an untraditional version: There was a thin slice of prosciutto but no sage, and the veal was blanketed by a layer of molten “provel” cheese. Most restaurants use this blend of processed cheese — typically white cheddar, provolone and Swiss — for pizza because it melts so beautifully. But Ferrara (whose restaurant doesn’t serve pizza) uses the concoction for lots of dishes, from a huge slab of meat-stuffed lasagna and a crusty eggplant Parmigiano to the Steak Modiga, two juicy little beef medallions dappled with mushrooms and a sauce of white wine, lemon juice and what seemed like a pound of butter.

Even a simple dish of linguine tossed with garlic oil, crushed red pepper and parsley — called Linguini Vesuvius here — can seem too rich after polishing off bread, butter and a big bowl of salad. But I did justice to the dish, scraping up every last bit.

Ferrara’s doesn’t make any of its desserts, but you might as well call them homemade. “A nice lady in Leavenworth makes them for me,” Tony says. Whoever she is, she puts out a beautiful wedge of sponge cake layered with strawberry jam and slathered with pink icing, as well as a fabulous tiramisu, a tidy little square of cold marscapone, ladyfingers and liqueur and a dusting of powdered cocoa.

Carol and I almost fought over the last bite, but I finally let her have it — I didn’t want to make a scene. After all, that’s someone else’s responsibility at Tony Ferrara’s. The music is by Sinatra, Keely Smith and Louis Prima, and the food is from the kitchen crew, but the dolce vita comes from Tony.