Meridiana, Broadway south of 106th

CLOSED

We needed comfort food. We had also been gazing longingly at the cover of the new Bon Appetite with it's enormous plate of spaghetti and meatballs, which I didn't feel like cooking. Two blocks south of us is Meridiana, a handsome looking Italian restaurant. Even the windows are the painted metal framed windows you see on restaurants in Italy. White tablecloths cover the tables, tented white napkins, an embracing decor of mellow mustard walls.

We were greeted at the door by a gregarious waiter who seated us at a four top, in the center a bottle of Perrier and a burning candle. The wine menu offered many choices -- I ordered a Malbec and David had a something with an Italian name that he'd never had before. Neither were on the "glass" list, but the restaurant was ready to accommodate our choices. Both were good and grew better as they breathed and we drank. Soothing music you could talk over played: Louie Armstrong, jazz vocals, Italian opera.

Ahh. The bread. Very fresh and spongy focaccia. Homemade wholewheat rolls light without saltiness in a semi-soft crust. Very good, but they would have been better if they'd been heated.

We shared a the house salad -- wonderfully fresh greens including romaine lettuce, a deeply green arugula, sliced endive, and the kind of tasteless, cardboardy tomatoes that you unfortunately get in winter. All were covered lightly with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

And when the attentive wait-staff cleared the salad and bread plates they also took our silverware. I always feel a moment of what-will-I-eat-with panic when the silverware is swept away -- and then feel relief knowing I'm being taking care of, that I'll get a new set of silverware for my next course.

I ordered the spaghetti and meatballs. I found the marinara sauce thickly tomatoey -- and with every bite kept thinking, I'm getting a good dose of lycopene. The meatballs were soft -- made primarily of veal, beef and breadcrumbs -- not the meatballs I fantasized which would be richly beefy and a bit crunchy on the outside and juicy-meaty on the inside.

David ordered a duck ragu with peas over a freshly cut home-made pasta. It tasted more like a rich meat sauce. The pasta, shaped like matchsticks, was perfectly al dente.

For dessert we ordered a slice of ricotta cheese cake. Wonderfully textured, a slight lemony zest, and delicious. We kept chiseling away at the cake -- each taking a bite until we split the last inch of it in half and in half again and in half again -- each trying to save one more bite for the other. Yum.

Our waiter offered us after dinner drinks on the house. David ordered a port -- very smooth. I ordered grappa -- very rough. I would have had to be wheeled home if I'd had more than the few sips I took.

Our bill came to $72. We look forward to returning and trying other dishes.