Marinara Sauce

Company description: Subway's "fresh take on Italian. Juicy chicken, zest-errific pepperoni, and our signature recipe marinara sauce toasted with melty cheese on your favorite freshly baked bread. Molto buona!" Chain: Subway. Calories: For a foot-long, 900 calories, 30 grams fat, 150 mgs cholesterol and 2,500 mgs salt. Yikes. Location: 1701 Ben Franklin Parkway. Order time: Three minutes. Price: $6.75. Review: This is an interesting idea for an unhealthy sandwich that would be worth the grief with better ingredients.

There are different stories as to how a basic Italian tomato sauce made from whole tomatoes became known as a marinara sauce. Since marinara translates closely from Italian to "sailor suit," some say that the sauce was described thusly in areas that bordered the sea. Others claim the name was bestowed upon the sauce by the wives of the sailors - mariners - who prepared it when their husbands returned home. Yet another tale says the name comes from the sailors themselves, from the days before refrigeration when meat would perish on a long journey but a tomato could survive long enough to become a delicious sauce made with herbs.

Service was so superb and the amenities so abundant that we had pretty much decided even before our food arrived that Ristorante Mona Lisa was as much a treasure as its celebrated namesake. Our slender, middle-aged waiter spoke in a soft, Continental tone that injected life into the silk flowers that decorated our table. His in-depth descriptions of the various dishes were unusually interesting and precise. Ristorante Mona Lisa, located on Sixth Street between South and Bainbridge, has been open for about seven months and features a moderately priced Italian menu.

YO, CHEFS! I had the Chicken Cappellini at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza's Sunday brunch. It was so good that I asked for the recipe. My waiter gave me the basics, but I must be missing something. When I prepared the dish, I simply could not match the taste. Could you please get the detailed recipe? Danielle Whalen Swedesboro, N.J. Dear Danielle, Executive chef Michael Bowman was happy to share the recipe . Bowman serves the dish as part of an elaborate buffet for the hotel's jazz brunch.

It's squeezed between a discount shoe store and a youthwear shop in one of those drab, cookie-cutter malls. It is called Touch of Italy. What a touch! The portions are immense, the noise level can be opera-loud, the service is "honey" friendly, the prices are low, and, miracle of miracles, the food is terrific. Be forewarned. They take no reservations. But the pace is swift and they do provide benches in the entrance corridor. You bring your own wine. You open it too, because of the quaint local laws.

With fresh ingredients and beautiful sauces, La Vigna offers an enviable sampling of Italian cuisine. Open three years, the Sicklerville restaurant offers hearty, mouth- watering, southern Italian dishes notable for their smooth, finely balanced sauces; generous, moderately priced portions add to the appeal. While most dishes are familiar favorites, several - such as carpaccio - offer unexpected culinary twists. Instead of paper-thin slices of uncooked filet touched with oil, parmesan or perhaps mustard, La Vigna's carpaccio ($4.95)

A dozen large neon signs give Ristorante Capuano a garish, carnival-like appearance, but looks are deceiving. Inside is an attractive restaurant with excellent southern Italian cuisine. The restaurant across Haddonfield Road from Garden State Park has changed hands several times in recent years and now is half pizza parlor, half restaurant. On the restaurant side, the brightly lighted main dining room has an ultra- contemporary decor that includes diamond-shaped smoked mirrors on mauve- carpeted walls, a tube of pink neon around the hollowed center of the ceiling, and high-backed leather-like booths topped with oak-framed plastic panels of what appears to be stained glass, affixed with decals of yellow daisies with orange centers and green stems.

For special holiday dining, Tre Figlio should be high on your list. Few places can match the superb Italian cuisine and comfortable setting of this attractive Pomona restaurant. Open since May 1989, Tre Figlio has not been widely known outside the Atlantic City area, an oversight we should rush to correct. The classy menu is filled with elegant dishes, some traditional and some based on recipes from the Cordivari family that owns the restaurant; either way, you can't lose.

If your grandmother were an old-time, South Philadelphia-Italian, five-star home cook, her kitchen probably would turn out food much like that served at Dante and Luigi's, at 10th and Christian Streets. Nothing much has changed here over the years. The food is still good, and the place looks pretty much the same. The upper dining room, to the left of the entrance, has been freshly painted in custard yellow, gray and pink - a decor deliciously reminiscent of an Italian rum cake.

If you can't afford to take a cruise, you can at least eat like you're on a cruise ship. That's the treat in store when you dock at Caffe Pasquale, a tiny luncheonette-style restaurant in downtown Runnemede. Chef-owner Domenico Furfaro, a native of the Calabria region of Italy, worked in cruise-ship kitchens for a decade. He met his wife, Alisa, on a ship - she was on her senior trip - and 12 years and three kids later, the pair have made a home for themselves in South Jersey. It's been two years since the couple took over the Runnemede storefront restaurant, which the menu bills as "Runnemede's Best Kept Secret.

Company description: Subway's "fresh take on Italian. Juicy chicken, zest-errific pepperoni, and our signature recipe marinara sauce toasted with melty cheese on your favorite freshly baked bread. Molto buona!" Chain: Subway. Calories: For a foot-long, 900 calories, 30 grams fat, 150 mgs cholesterol and 2,500 mgs salt. Yikes. Location: 1701 Ben Franklin Parkway. Order time: Three minutes. Price: $6.75. Review: This is an interesting idea for an unhealthy sandwich that would be worth the grief with better ingredients.

Nicole Atkins slips away from the South by Southwest Music Festival hubbub on the Sixth Street strip and settles onto a banquette in the ornate lobby of the Victorian-era Driskill Hotel. Atkins, a singer from Asbury Park, N.J., who plays the World Cafe Live tonight with her band, The Sea, is in her element here. And not because rock-star types like Perry Farrell and Moby keep strolling by. It's because the Driskill, which served as Lyndon Johnson's congressional campaign headquarters and is said to be inhabited by the ghost of a 4-year-old girl who tumbled down the grand staircase to her death, is suffused with history.

Pasta, pasta, bread, pizza and pasta. An Italian restaurant is a minefield for anyone with celiac disease, an autoimmune disease that destroys the lining of the small intestine when wheat gluten is ingested. Often misdiagnosed, celiac disease is estimated to affect about 2 million individuals. Also, many parents of children with autism and Asperger's syndrome have discovered eating a gluten-free diet is helpful. So, Pasquale Masters, Skip Elmer and John Fina added a gluten-free menu at their Voorhees, N.J. restaurant, Pasta Pomodoro.

Places like Butcher's Cafe are why I'm looking to buy a place in the Bella Vista neighborhood. Located in a corner storefront that was formerly Frank Giunta Meats, Butcher's Cafe is a charming, moderately priced mangiateria, serving hearty Italian fare. Owner and chef Pascual Cancelliere runs the joint with his wife and parents, all veterans of other restaurants around town, such as Volare in Manayunk, Cafe Longano in Bella Vista and Monterey Grille in Old City, all of them now closed.

If you can't afford to take a cruise, you can at least eat like you're on a cruise ship. That's the treat in store when you dock at Caffe Pasquale, a tiny luncheonette-style restaurant in downtown Runnemede. Chef-owner Domenico Furfaro, a native of the Calabria region of Italy, worked in cruise-ship kitchens for a decade. He met his wife, Alisa, on a ship - she was on her senior trip - and 12 years and three kids later, the pair have made a home for themselves in South Jersey. It's been two years since the couple took over the Runnemede storefront restaurant, which the menu bills as "Runnemede's Best Kept Secret.

YO, CHEFS! I had the Chicken Cappellini at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza's Sunday brunch. It was so good that I asked for the recipe. My waiter gave me the basics, but I must be missing something. When I prepared the dish, I simply could not match the taste. Could you please get the detailed recipe? Danielle Whalen Swedesboro, N.J. Dear Danielle, Executive chef Michael Bowman was happy to share the recipe . Bowman serves the dish as part of an elaborate buffet for the hotel's jazz brunch.

What would you expect from a place named Quincy's Pub II? I'd envisioned a traditional pub with a Cheers-type clientele, so I wasn't prepared for the infants-in-arms, the Little Leaguers dining out with Dad, and the tiny tots who were among our lunch and dinner companions. I'd thought that the place on Oregon Avenue would look the way most Americans envision an English pub. And Quincy's does. Or at least the bar does. The dining room does start out with dark wood, but then adds floral chintz at the windows, romantic art on the walls, and silk roses on the glass-topped, pink-clothed tables.

With fresh ingredients and beautiful sauces, La Vigna offers an enviable sampling of Italian cuisine. Open three years, the Sicklerville restaurant offers hearty, mouth- watering, southern Italian dishes notable for their smooth, finely balanced sauces; generous, moderately priced portions add to the appeal. While most dishes are familiar favorites, several - such as carpaccio - offer unexpected culinary twists. Instead of paper-thin slices of uncooked filet touched with oil, parmesan or perhaps mustard, La Vigna's carpaccio ($4.95)

In several respects, the new Marasano's II restaurant in the Main Street development is deja vu. Although the name and setting are different, the vital part of this attractive restaurant - its marvelous Italian cuisine - is the same as in its earlier life in Haddonfield. Marasano's is the successor to Murrassano's Garden Cafe, the intimate Haddonfield restaurant that closed last summer, changed its name and moved to the spectacular Main Street premises formerly occupied by Gina Rosa.

Service was so superb and the amenities so abundant that we had pretty much decided even before our food arrived that Ristorante Mona Lisa was as much a treasure as its celebrated namesake. Our slender, middle-aged waiter spoke in a soft, Continental tone that injected life into the silk flowers that decorated our table. His in-depth descriptions of the various dishes were unusually interesting and precise. Ristorante Mona Lisa, located on Sixth Street between South and Bainbridge, has been open for about seven months and features a moderately priced Italian menu.