Caffe Allora

[October 17th, 2007] 504 NW 9th Ave., 445-4612. Lunch and dinner daily. $$ Moderate.

An uspcale hole-in-the-wall with simple, unadorned style, Caffe Allora takes the pretentious hassle out of finding hearty Italian food. There aren’t a hundred obscure choices here: The simple menu focuses on meat, cheese and pasta and delivers on all three fronts from the start (an antipasto plate piled with cold cuts and plump olives) to finish (chocolate gelato dusted in cocoa powder). In between, try the pomodoro e prosciutto , a penne pasta swimming in tomato-cream sauce, with bits of ham spicing up the works. Or go for the item that put this place on the map: gnocchi quattro formaggi , bite-sized, tender potato dumplings surround by, yes, four kinds of cheeses. (AWM)

Signature Dish: The gnocchi. Nothing tops the gnocchi.

Standouts: An evening meal upstairs is casual enough to allow you to finish a good book by candlelight.

Regrets: But first you’ll have to wade through the crowd of Eurotrash assholes chain-smoking at the sidewalk tables. Buncha jamooks, those guys.