For: Roberta Flack
6320 Arlington Blvd., Falls Church; 703-533-1885; pistoneitalianinn.com
You’ve seen its billboard tower over the lattice of 7, 50 and Wilson Boulevard. Falls Church has supported Pistone’s Italian Inn since 1977. It shows.
Oversized booths line the walls, unlike small, bare tables filling new restaurants. The menu’s multiple pages contrasts against the one pagers, printed daily, for changing lineups at today’s farm-to-table concepts.
The tomato should be sacred at an Italian restaurant, but chef and owner, Telemaco Bonaduce, could only say the red jewel came from—even in the height of summer—a “produce distributor,” not locally.
Bonaduce calls the pizza Chicago-style, although that claim falls thin. Meatballs do not melt on the tongue; dried bits of sauce stick to bland pasta below. But kicky marinara perks up fried calamari.
Pistone’s has its charms, as somewhere comfortable in its long-ago formed identity. The adjoining bar is packed on a Monday night, as silver-haired couples dance to Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.”
(October 2012)
