FORTVILLE — Simone Lucarini treasures many a memory from his childhood cooking with his family in his Tuscan hometown of Cortona. He remembers joking and playing with his mother, making a mess of ingredients as they prepared dinner in a bona fide Italian kitchen.
It’s those flavors of authenticity that Simone said he and his wife, Elizabeth, intend to bring to Fortville.
Patrons of the new restaurant Cortona — named for Lucarini’s hometown, which was also the setting for the film “Under the Tuscan Sun” — won’t be finding fettucini alfredo or spaghetti and meatballs on the menu. While those might be staples of your typical Italian-American restaurant, Lucarini said he wants to bring Fortville the real deal.
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The restaurant, which will be located at 209 S. Main Street in Fortville, is slated to open soon this fall. There will be bar seating along with an additional dining room in the back of the building, with about 70 seats total. Lucarini said this restaurant is his way of sharing his passion and unique culture with the people in his new community.
Visiting carnivores will be pleased to see a huge selection of specialty meats at Cortona, to include wood-grilled porterhouse steaks, wild boar and plenty of seafood dishes. Their available pasta dishes won’t have sauce crudely dumped on top of the noodles, he said. Their hand-crafted sauces will be carefully tossed in the meal itself, like it ought to be, he said.
They’re almost finished creating their wood-fired pizza oven as well, which customers will have a view of as they sit at the bar enjoying a glass of wine. Simone Lucarini is also a fully-trained Sommelier, so patrons will have an extensive variety of options in pairing a drink with their meal.
Virtually everything in terms of ingredients will be locally sourced, including all of the meat in his dishes. They wanted to make it as “farm-to-table” as possible with the vegetables and meat cuts, Simone Lucarini said.
Elizabeth, a Cambridge, Indiana native, said she loved to cook before she married her husband. But once she was introduced to genuine Italian cooking, there was no turning back. She added with a laugh that it was clear from that point forward, she needed to be more mindful of portion sizes when eating food prepared by her husband; he makes it easy to accidentally overeat.
Simone has worked in a number of professional kitchens in big cities around the world, to include Italy, France and upstate New York. Elizabeth met him in Indiana, where they put down their roots, and the couple soon discovered that Fortville, like Simone’s tiny hometown of Cortona, turned out to be the perfect destination for the restaurant they wanted to create and run together.
“We like the small town,” Elizabeth said. “It’s kind of got the best of everything. It’s got the small-town feel, but all the luxuries of living near a big city.”
