Faccia Luna: review

Dad was thoroughly pleased with yesterday's outing to Faccia Luna in Old Town Alexandria, a restaurant I hadn't visited in years. He thought I should write a review of the place, so here it is.

1. Service

It was a Monday night, right in the middle of the dinner hour, but seating wasn't a problem. We were led to a booth as soon as we stepped in, and our server, a young lady, proved to be very prompt and friendly. (The main gauge of promptitude, for me, is how often the server swoops by to refill an empty glass. Ours was spot-on.)

There was one major hitch, however: the kitchen flubbed my brother David's order, adding extra mushrooms to his pizza instead of the sausage he'd requested. David's miscarried pizza was taken away, and was replaced a few minutes later by the proper dish.

2. Ambience

Dinnertime lighting was tastefully dim, but not too dim. The atmosphere struck me as informal and family-oriented, but the bar was a prominent presence: it's the first thing you see upon entering, and it dominates almost half the seating space. Faccia Luna takes pride in their wine selection, and I got the impression that the bar patrons were more of a wine crowd than a beer crowd. The bartender dropped and shattered a bottle of something near the tail end of our meal, which would qualify as a tragedy if I drank alcohol. Dad stepped over to help a person with cut fingers ("I'm a medic," he said-- and he is); his aid was politely accepted.

I think there was music playing in the background; if there was, it was kept tastefully low. The overall noise level allowed for easy and animated conversation; no shouting was necessary. All in all, it was easy to settle in.

3. Menu

I previously described Faccia Luna as a "fusion Italian eatery." The restaurant is part of a chain that describes its restos as "trattorias." I call the place "fusion" because the menu, while predominantly Italian in focus, has French-American highlights. The menu's text certainly features a lot of bad French spelling-- "chocolate noir," from the dessert menu, comes to mind.

The menu itself ran the gamut from a wide variety of pizzas to pasta dishes to sandwiches and salads-- a fairly typical gamut for Old Town Alexandria. While not exactly cheap, Faccia Luna's prices were reasonable; our meal ran about $25 per person before tip.

4. Bouffe

The appetizers were interestingly different: we decided to order an eggplant dish ("Melanzane alla Parma" on the menu) and a portobello-and-pepper dish (Portobello alla Chevre [sic]). They arrived hot and attractive; the eggplant, covered in a generous layer of mozzarella and sitting on a smooth marinara, disappeared quickly. The mushroom dish also disappeared, but the whole cloves of garlic went to Mom who, being Korean, had no trouble dispatching them. Garlic bread came with both appetizers-- not much of it, but enough to swab some of the sauces on both plates.

We all decided to avoid the Monday Night Special, a sort of bare-bones menu prix fixe, in favor of exploring various dishes. My brother David ordered a personal-sized pizza that looked and smelled delicious (La Capra: goat's cheese, spinach, and chicken, with the addition of sausage); Mom had a salmon dish; Dad ordered a chicken breast-on-herbed penne plate, and I had some plump gnocchi with slices of sausage on top (Gnocchi di Piselli). The gnocchi, which were plump and rib-sticking, featured a tomato-vodka sauce.

Portion sizes were satisfactory without being huge. Mom did her usual thing, giving away chunks of food to the rest of the family, which is how I know that her salmon was cooked to perfection-- buttery-smooth on the inside and seared crispy on the outside, in a perfect contrast of taste and texture. Alas, the fish was served atop a pile of shredded and seasoned onions, but that's just a personal hangup of mine, not the restaurant's fault. Dad's chicken penne earned plenty of praise from Dad (strangely, Dad's and Mom's dishes aren't listed on the online menu, which is why I haven't given you their proper names); I sampled a bit and pronounced it very good, indeed.

We were pleasantly full by the end of the main course, but because we had already had a glimpse of the dessert section of the menu, we were tempted. Dad ordered a cheesecake with raspberry sauce; David ordered the tiramisu (or Tira Mi Su, as it's called on the menu), and I swerved from ordering the Chocolate [sic] Noir to having something not listed on the menu: mousse au chocolat. David, who has been to Faccia Luna before, had recommended the tiramisu to everyone, but I once again gave in to my chocoholism. Mom ordered nothing, content to sample our desserts (sort of the reverse of what she'd done at dinner).

I tried a bit of Dad's cheesecake and thought it was pretty good, though not great. David's tiramisu disappeared before I had a chance to scoop into it; it was served in a ramekin, which is unusual for tiramisu. My mousse rocked. It was thicker than the mousse I'd grown used to in Switzerland, and arguably richer, but delicious nonetheless. Mom pronounced it the best of the three desserts.

5. Rating

Faccia Luna rates "happy ending" on the massage parlor scale. The night wasn't perfect: Dad's dessert could have been fresher, and the kitchen messed up David's order, but the overall experience was very positive. Service was friendly and prompt; the ambience was cheerful and struck a good balance between family dining and something more adult. The aforementioned shattering wine bottle was more entertainment than tragedy, as far as I was concerned, and the food was excellent. If you find yourself in Old Town and have a few bucks to spend on a very good meal, then I highly recommend Faccia Luna.


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