Give Festa Italiana a whirl

By Joy Vann
Correspondent

If ever you've wanted to indulge your inner Lucy, this may be your weekend.

Festa Italiana, a celebration of Italian cuisine and culture, takes place Friday and Saturday at Virginia Beach's 17th Street park. The fest features a variety of food, musical groups - including a strolling accordion player - and a grape stomp.

That's right, a grape stomp, just like the one you may have seen on "I Love Lucy."

A local couple, actors portraying characters named Pinot and Grigio, will invite people of all ages to step into a 70-gallon, wooden vat of grapes and start squishing.

The fest is produced by Beachevents, the city's entertainment program that presents about 25 events throughout the year. It was conceived as a way to attract locals and visitors to the Oceanfront after Labor Day, said marketing director Mike Hilton.

"What we had in mind was an event like the Greek festival in Norfolk, with a huge tent, communal tables, a buffet line and entertainment," he said.

La Bella Italia restaurant will cater the food for the third year. Vittoria Caruso, daughter of the restaurant's founder, and her mother created the menu of hot and cold items. Prices will range from a $3 scoop of gelato to a $10 main course.

In the way of sandwiches, choices will include La Caprese with mozzarella, tomatoes and basil and La Vittoria with artichokes and roasted vegetables.

Main courses will include chicken Marsala, baked ziti and stuffed shells with red sauce, and sausage and peppers.

Caruso and crew are excited to set out their Italian flags and banners and roll up their sleeves. Ten La Bella Italia staffers will serve the crowd under an enormous tent. After a couple of years of experience, they've set the proportions to a T. Last year, of the 140 pounds of baked ziti prepared, only half a tray was left at closing time.

The Pizza Olympics, new this year, will be hosted by YNot Pizza. Brothers Harry and Tony DiSilvestro, co-owners of YNot, presided over the first Pizza Games preliminary at the restaurant's Great Neck location Tuesday night. Both wore black pants and shirts that seemed to breathe flour as the pair handed out disk after disk of dough to the mostly young competitors. About 60 competitors using 300 pounds of dough made their way through the four stations: best spin, largest pizza, highest toss and pairs pizza toss.

Tiffany Doudera of Virginia Beach took her two daughters, Skyler and Trinity Scheel, ages 7 and 5.

Tiffany and Skyler did the pizza toss together. "Throw it like a Frisbee. It's got to spin," Doudera instructed, just before the dough took a dive.

"That's all right," Tony DiSilvestro said. "Take another try. It takes time to learn how to spin."

Finalists in youth, teen and adult categories will take the festival stage Saturday to compete for trophies, medals and bragging rights. DiSilvestro said the purpose of the event is to have fun and show off the art of pizza-making. DiSilvestro knows a thing or two about competitive pizza games. In the early 1990s he placed third - out of 600 competitors from around the world - in a national "fastest pizza maker" challenge.

At these Pizza Olympics, he said, spectators can expect to see impressive skills and results - such as a 50-inch-wide pie.

"Competitors will be given the same size dough, and they will stretch and stretch and lay it on the floor and stretch some more, and then we measure," he said.

As for the best spin, that's a challenge to keep the pizza in the air for the longest time.

"The best pizza guys will spin it over their heads and down and around their backs and arms. But you have to be working the dough a long time to do that," he said.

In addition to hosting the Pizza Olympics, YNot will sell pizza and zeppole - sweet, deep-fried dough balls based on DiSilvestro's grandmother's recipe.

Music lovers will be entertained throughout Festa Italiana by a variety of performers.

Cour d'Italia, a dance troupe from Connecticut featuring teenagers and young adults, will perform authentic Italian dances. Ray Massa's EuroRhythms will perform Italian classics and American standards such as "Fly Me to the Moon" and "That's Amore."

Another group, Tre Bella, is a trio of women with a repertoire that includes Italian standards, Abba hits and '80s songs.

The final musical act is The Rat Pack Reprise, a trio of impersonators from Chicago who - backed by a live band - re-create the tuxedo-wearing, Martini-swilling heyday of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

Joy Vann, joyvann@cox.net