I really don't know how much a plate of spaghetti and a forlorn meatball costs a restaurant, but it can't be much. But at the Saucy Noodle, where the spaghetti is overcooked and given a tempered ladle of inept sauce that would barely fill an eggshell, I'm all but certain that the $12.95 price tag is past-a the point of equitableness.

It's not that I have issues with paying $12.95 for spaghetti, especially if the noodles are housemade, the garlic is fresh, the tomatoes and olive oil are imported from Italy, the sauce makes me swoon and the meatball has a modicum of flavor.

But I found none of those things to be true in the plate of noodles that I pushed away after the first few bites.

The Saucy Noodle has been slinging Americanized Italian food since 1964, two years before I was born. The first time I wandered into the joint, I had just moved from Chicago to Washington Park and was desperate for an old-fashioned Italian fix. From what I remember, I got exactly that at a place whose tagline has always been, "If you don't like garlic, go home!"

Since then, the Saucy Noodle has endured a horrific fire followed by a remodel, a failed second outpost in Aurora, an influx of competition from other, better Italian restaurants, a lapse in garlic fulfillment and a fickle public that's always looking for the newest hot spot.

But it also has its share of regulars. On three separate visits, I recognized many of the same faces I'd seen a few nights earlier. The waits aren't as long as they used to be back in the glory days, but snagging one of those red-and-white-checkered tables on a Friday night isn't easy.

Families love the place, and there are more kids here on any given night than in my child's classroom on any given day. A group of four elementary-school girls, dressed in frilly dresses and black patent-leather shoes, had somehow convinced their fathers to wear suits. Everyone smiled and giggled and commented on how sweet the whole scenario was.

It was so endearing, in fact, that for a moment, I forgot why I was there.

But then the calamari ($6.95) arrived and I was pained all over again. I stared at the rings and twisted tentacles and wondered when the calamari gods decided to change the color of the fried crust to vanilla. What happened to amber rings of gold? Besides that, they were tough, greasy and devoid of any seasoning.

And then came the baked clams ($7.95), an ocean of them drowning in a soupy tomato sauce that was utterly tasteless despite boasting enough specks of herbs to make a mountain of confetti. And its blanket of melted mozzarella cheese, thicker than shag carpet, could have doubled as the sole on your cowboy boots.

What followed were black olives ($6.95), deep-fried and stuffed with Asiago cheese (passable); fried green chile ravioli ($6.95), puffed up like super-size bubbles blown by a kid but virtually absent of chile; and a caprese salad ($7.95) with substandard mozzarella disks, wilted julienned basil and flavorless tomatoes all mounded over lettuce scraps.

As I looked around the room, I locked eyes with one of the ornately framed portraits on the wall - most of them family photos - and the stern woman staring back at me looked even unhappier than I was. But she also looked wise, so I homed in on her for a bit longer until I got a vibe.

That vibe was pizza, specifically the Delgado ($17), a thin-crusted pie with a crisp crust brushed with olive oil, paved with a chunky tomato sauce hazed with garlic and topped with fennel-specked sausage and sweet, caramelized onions.

I smiled at the photo in thanks but got no reaction and no vibe for what to do next. So we winged it and ordered the homemade linguine ($11.95 half order; $13.95 full order) swathed in arrabbiata sauce, which isn't the sauce it comes with, but I wanted something fiery. Fiery would be a stretch, but the noodles were cooked al dente and the sauce had kick, if not enough garlic.

And while both the shrimp marinara ($18.95 half; $20.95 full) and shrimp scampi ($19.95 half; $21.95 full) suffered from scrooge-ish sauce portions that required jolts of seasonings, the shrimp were plump and tender.

What I like most about the Saucy Noodle are the servers. They're young, enthusiastic, vivacious and eager to please.

I wonder if they can cook.

The Saucy Noodle

* Grade: C

* Address: 727 S. University Blvd.

* Hours: Daily from 4:30 p.m.

* Food: Italian

* How much: $4.95-$11.95 starters, soups and salads; $7.95-$23.95 main dishes; $10-$18 pizzas

* Reservations: Recommended on weekends

* Noise: The child factor makes it lively.

* Information: 303-733-6977; saucy noodle.com

* Parking: Street parking

Back to Top