Candyce and I met Franky Bones at Radio Milano, LGO’s newest restaurant at the corner of 40th Street and Campbell in Arcadia. Frank is a 2nd generation Italian who was raised in Arizona. I hadn’t seen him in a while, so was a natural fit to invite him to join me and Candyce at LGO’s “new Italian” restaurant on its first week. I’ve enjoyed LGO’s other restaurants, and was anxious to see what they came up with.

If this were a new restaurant in another part of town by a different restaurateur, I wouldn’t be so critical. But LGO has momentum, so you expect creativity, especially when it comes time to branding the restaurant. Having said that…

The atmosphere disappointed me. It’s one thing to keep a visual theme in all of your restaurants, but it’s another thing to re-use old ideas. The interior is all-too-familiar: lots of hard surfaces, concrete floors, block walls. These surfaces might be hip, but it makes the dining area too loud. Even with a full spread of fabric curtains stretching across the back wall, the voices of the room roared too loud for good conversation.

The only thing that sets this restaurant’s interior apart from the gang that is LGO is the ceiling and the seating. They inherited the unique architecture from the previous owners, and they played up the low, wood arched ceilings from wall to wall. The chairs and tables were wood laminate held up by thin, spidery legs. When compared to the volume of the room and the scale of the arched ceiling, the furniture combined for the busyness of a high school cafeteria.

There were a couple details that did please me. The front windows look like they’ll swing right open in nice weather, a detail worth carrying over from their other restaurants. The lower portion of the windows is a wide concrete shelf that will serve as a bench for folks inside and outside. It’s a clever way provoke the social life through the restaurant walls. Like Chelsea’s Kitchen, waiting for a table might be as fun as having a table.

The other details I like were at the back of the restaurant. Behind the wide curtain on the back wall were glass doors that will most likely open to the narrow strip of courtyard. The young trees planted in an orderly row will give some organic relief to the industrial vibe inside. If they’re smart, they’ll make friends with their neighbors whose back wall defines the far edge of the courtyard. A whimsical Italian mural could set the tone for the whole restaurant. (And why not? The wall is shielded from the harshest desert sun.)

The food? For the record, the restaurant is a “new Italian” concept. Aside from the fashion capitol the restaurant was named after (Milan), there wasn’t much on the menu that spoke Italian. I didn’t expect numbered pasta dishes, but I expected to read through creative interpretations of Italian classics.

We started with the vegetable plate. It was fresh and tasty, but it was hard to figure out how you can charge $11 for a handful of vegetables with two thin slices of fresh mozzarella. Listen, if you are a “new Italian” restaurant and you are going to anchor a dish with an Italian staple, then make sure to slice like that mozzarella like the hungry Italians do. And I am talking about a handful of vegetables. I could’ve scooped them off the plate and put them in my pants pocket.

Perhaps the waitress was too scared to tell us the truth, but we were under the impression that we got real entrees with descent proportions. The menu seemed to be divided into appetizers and entrees. Come serving time, we were surprised to see we bought appetizers that were priced like entrees. The confusion grew…so this is a new-Italian tapas restaurant?

I understand the concept of a tapas. You get lots of little servings and you share them with friends. You explore the menu and discover different flavors. But that only works when you have dozens of options at reasonable prices. I’ve been to several tapas restaurants and enjoyed every part of the dining experience. But Radio Milano’s menu was short, and every item was stickered between $10 to over $14. It’ll take five orders for a couple on a date to feel full, and all of a sudden you’re inching towards $100 with tax and tip. Where’s the fun in that? For less money than that, you can have the timeless $10,000,000 atmosphere of Sassi up in Pinnacle Peak.

Anyway, I was served my main course. I ordered the meatloaf because I like to see how chefs spin a comfort food classic. It was tasty and moist, but it was just a fraction larger than a biscotti I ate that morning with my espresso. If you can make it bigger and serve it to me at Chelsea’s Kitchen, I’d order it again. Candyce and I didn’t bother ordering anymore when we realized the cost of the night had already run over $50.

After dinner, Candyce and I walked to the car and we both admitted to still being hungry. We flirted with the idea of going to LGO Grocery across the street to buy a salads or a couple sandwiches to go. If our night had ended there, our evening would’ve been a big let down. But we swung by Safeway and got a big massive sub sandwich from then sat by Tempe Town Lake under the night sky. It was the perfect night, almost a little too cool with the breezes coming off the lake. (Could this really be June in Phoenix?) (Could that’ve really been LGO’s newest restaurant?)