Spaghetti westerns are adored for their Italian eccentricities, such as dubbed voiceovers, fictitious locales, and linguine outlaws shaped like Clint Eastwood. Celebrate tasty reinventions with today’s Groupon: for $25, you get $50 worth of rustic Italian fare at Nick’s Tuscan Grill, located on East Park Avenue in Long Beach.
The food tailors at Nick's Tuscan Grill snip culinary flavors from traditional Italian dishes and redesign them for a menu full of inventive, familial twists. Playful mozzarella pinwheels riff on traditional cheese sticks, adding beats of artisanal prosciutto to a balsamic snare-drum drizzle ($8). Relatives share bowls of gorgonzola salad ($8.50) over energetic games of hot potato or divide edible property of chicken-milanese pizzatte landscaped with baby greens and pecorino shavings ($13). Between story recants, servers deliver dinner-, family-, and industrial-vat-size portions of pasta to tables ($17+) along with refined entrees, such as garlic grilled rib steak ($29) or grilled whole bronzini tanning in a lemon-caper glaze of brown butter ($26).
Nick's warmly lit interior evokes a sense of communal charm, with its wood-accented booths and exposed-brick walls. The dining room's open layout lets laughter mingle with clinking glasses and falsetto spaghetti slurps to create an Italian operatic score. Those who prefer music by a live DJ instead may enjoy it on Friday and Saturday nights, starting at 9 p.m.
Nick's Tuscan Grill
An exposed brick wall hung with Italian posters and hanging lanterns stands by a bar with a stone base, matching the rustic feel of Nick's menu of Italian classics. It's a cuisine that's garnered attention from Newsday.com's Peter M. Gianotti who wrote that the eatery "delivers full-flavored and very generous Italian-American cooking that's just as welcome as any rare T-bone or minestrone di fagioli." He also mentions the pizzas, which chefs bake in a brick oven and can prepare gluten-free or oxygen-free for those accustomed to eating in the cold vacuum of space. Alongside such dishes, the eatery pairs chiantis from Tuscany and pinot grigios from Atlo Adige pulled from their hand-picked wine list.