La Strada Restaurant

On its face, La Strada is the Italian dining room its block expects — white linens, a Bank Street address in the Glebe, a menu that runs from antipasti through pasta to veal, lamb, and dessert. It is a dinner-first kitchen, priced for an evening out rather than a weeknight grab. What complicates the first read is how rarely the cooking settles for the generic version of itself. The house specialty is Agnello La Strada, a rack of Alberta lamb finished with rosemary and black pepper, plated with grilled vegetables and mashed potatoes — a dish named for the restaurant. So is Zucchini Pietronius, the baked-zucchini antipasto finished with parmigiano, parsley, and bread crumbs, which opens the menu under the family's name rather than a category label.

The pasta carries the clearest read on the kitchen. Lobster ravioli arrives in a rosé sauce; gnocchi con pomodoro is rolled in house and dressed simply in tomato and basil, the kind of plate that lives or dies on texture rather than novelty; cannelloni alla Toscana comes filled and baked in tomato and cheese; fettuccine frutti di mare carries the seafood end. The secondi widen the meal past pasta — veal Portofino, pollo scarpariello, eggplant parmigiana, and a rotation of sole, salmon, and prawns — so a table can stay in classic comfort or build toward a fuller dinner. One dish stays deliberately off the nightly menu: the square white clam pizza is made only for catering and events, and only on a day's notice.