By DCist Contributor Josh Kramer

Casa Luca (1099 New York Avenue NW) is the middle child of Fabio Trabocchi’s restaurants. Opened between Fiola and last year’s Fiola Mare, Casa Luca is styled more like a traditional osteria and focused on rustic Italian food.

Trabocchi’s family is from Le Marche, in Northern Italy, on the Adriatic sea. That region’s cuisine is often lighter and features different ingredients from the heavy meat and pasta dishes found in the South.

This Sunday, February 22nd, they are introducing a brunch menu, with multi-course options as well as individual dishes that are not your typical benedict or pancakes. Some of the options might seem unusual for breakfast, like the addictive baccalà fritters, fried balls of salty cod. Others, like spaghetti carbonara, make complete sense and have familiar breakfast ingredients.

In a recent event for the press to showcase the new brunch menu, I enjoyed the Anson Mills white polenta. Anson Mills, in coastal South Carolina, has become known throughout the United States for their innovative farming of heritage grains previously thought to be lost. On top of the creamy polenta are smoked Penn Cove mussels from Washington state and a light sugo finto, a meatless tomato sauce. The dish is simple and elegant, with fresh flavors that show a side of Italian cooking that defies stereotype.

Illustration by Josh Kramer.