D'Anna's still a great choice for tasty meals

JOHN STARK - THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

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BELLINGHAM - D'Anna's Café Italiano is a well-established downtown dining option, pulling in a steady clientele for more than 10 years with house-made ravioli and other delights.

When the place first opened, owner Michael D'Anna amazed his customers with hearty, relatively simple meals at surprisingly low prices. Since then, the place has gotten bigger and more sophisticated, with an array of higher-priced dishes such as Dungeness crab linguine, $21.95, and specials that range up to $24.

But you can still get a fine meal here for a lot less. Three ravioli selections are available for $13.75, and you can get a simple pasta meal with basil pesto or alfredo sauce for $12.50.

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We started our meal by spilitting a bowl of steamer clams, $10.95. It was a generous portion of nice-sized clams. Each bivalve was a mouthful, with none of those puny half-grown ones in the bowl. They were perfectly cooked in a simple garlic and parsley broth.

For main courses, we knew we couldn't go wrong with ravioli, and we didn't. Chard and sausage ravioli, $13.75, featured big pasta pillows in a rich red tomato sauce.

Butternut squash ravioli, $16.50, was especially fine. Butternut squash might seem like a rather autumnal meal, but for me it's good any day of the year, especially surrounded by D'Anna's pasta and tossed in butter with walnuts, garlic and sage.

I'm not inclined to vegetarianism, although I really am reducing my meat intake. A rich, savory dish like this makes meat superfluous.

Both of these plates should be big enough to satisfy hearty eaters. They are served with house salad and Sicilian bread, which is pretty much like pizza, topped with tomato sauce, herbs and cheese.

We probably shouldn't have, but we finished by splitting an order of tiramisu, $6.50. The slice of cake was almost comically large-too big for the two of us to finish after clams and ravioli. It also failed to dazzle our tastebuds, but those tastebuds were a bit cloyed by the time we got around to dessert.

D'Anna's is also a good bet for a festive lunch, with a menu of Italian sandwiches and pastas in the $8-$12 range.