Clan brings Italian fare, Jersey flair to Black Lake

OGDENSBURG — It's like a family from New Jersey fell out of the sky and landed on the shores of Black Lake.

Anthony Foti and his relatives have resurrected the once proud and popular Lakeside Inn. For many years, back in the '80s, as I recall, people would flock to the Lakeside for fine food. More befitting the times, this grand old building overlooking the lake is now called Black Lake Tavern.

It has been a two-year project for Tony, a former car dealer from New Jersey. He spent many years visiting this popular fishing and camping area on his vacations.

Now his restaurant and tavern is open for business, ready to make happy new visitors to the lake.

It's a big building. You can't miss it coming down the road, six or seven miles from Ogdensburg. The outside walls are plastered with old road signs and soft drink signs and other memorabilia. A huge wooden bear greets you just outside the entrance off the parking lot.

Inside, the eclectic collection of junkobilia continues — sports stuff like team jerseys and oversized helmets, antiques and artifacts of every kind. Not just on the floors and walls, but even glued to the ceiling.

Tony was behind the beerless bar (no liquor license yet) talking with the waitress (April, his sister) and a third relative sitting at what appeared to be the staff table, all conversing with Jersey accents so thick you could cut them with a knife.

April invited us to sit anywhere. There were lots of choices since only one other table was occupied in this very spacious building. She presented the menus, recommending some of her favorites. You could tell she'd done this before somewhere. She was totally casual and personable, even though she twalked aliddle funny.

There are two menus. One is the dinner menu, with steak, chicken, seafood, Italian specialties and gourmet burgers. The other is the brick oven pizza menu — over 20 different choices, all available in one gigantic 18-inch size.

Appetizers are, for the most part, are standard deep-fried stuff with some exceptions. We went for the garlic knots ($2.99) and Kansas City "wild wings" ($9.99).

The garlic knots were excellent, six freshly made dough balls cooked with garlic and imported olive oil and served with homemade marinara sauce. They were light, airy, not too garlicky, not greasy at all.

The "wild wings" were actually bone-in pieces of pork tossed in your choice of "wing" sauce. While the meat didn't quite fall off the bone as April claimed, they were tasty and a surprisingly leaner alternative to chicken wings.

Pizza appears to be a specialty, so we ordered "The Don Juan" with eggplant, ricotta, mozzarella, garlic and tomato sauce. (Their pizzas are cleverly named, like Big Tony Pepperoni, Nick the Greek, Rollie Pollie Meatball, and more).

They were out of eggplant, so our second choice was the Rocky Balboa Philly Cheese Steak pizza. This was a great pizza, loaded with thinly sliced sirloin steak, onions, mushrooms, peppers, mozzarella and Jack cheeses. The crust was homemade, fresh and fantastic.

All entrées include one trip to the salad bar. We got off to a bad start — had to sort through the salad bowls to find a clean one. That aside, there was a nice assortment of crisp iceberg and romaine greens, sliced olives, chopped tomatoes, mandarin oranges, cheese, bacon bits, croutons, cukes — about a dozen things altogether. We particularly enjoyed the Italian dressing that appeared to be homemade.

Meanwhile, back at the table, April was insistent on clearing plates and silverware between every course. Where do you find that in a casual dining setting? Even though it was silverware that needed a little additional cleaning after coming from the dishwasher, wrapped in a paper napkin, we appreciated the effort.

Delmonico steak ($14.95), a 12-ounce cut, was quite nice, arriving a little on the rare side for being ordered "medium, medium-rare." Not a problem — rather have it undercooked than overcooked. Tasty, but it could have been a little more tender and less fatty.

Burgers piqued our interest. With names like the Yankee Doodle Burger and the Bada-Bing Burger, how could you not order one?

We got the Home Run Burger ($8.95), 8 ounces of grilled Angus along with big, thick pieces of ham and bacon, great cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and Thousand Island dressing. It was fantastic — one of the most flavorful burgers we've ever had, perfect in every way.

Shrimp scampi ($12.95) was pretty good, six or seven shrimp with their tails removed, nicely sautéed in butter, garlic and white wine, arranged around our choice of rice pilaf.

Many of the menu items have an Italian flair, so I tried the linguini with clams ($11.95), my first choice for a good pasta dish at an Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, this was not a good choice. Very simply, it was like someone opened a can of chopped clams and dumped them over a plateful of linguini. Cold linguini, at that.

And then it happened. Just as we were finishing our entrées and it was time for the table to be cleared, World War III broke out at the staff table.

We heard several takeout orders being phoned in over the course of the evening.

It seems someone picked up their pizza, only to be given the wrong one. This wasn't discovered until the next customer came in to get theirs and noticed it wasn't what they ordered.

For the next 20 minutes, no exaggeration, the up-to-that-point friendly Foti family went ballistic, trying to lay blame for the pizza mix-up on each other. I'm sure they thought they were keeping their voices down, but we could hear every word, many of which should not be used in public. And we were at least 50 feet away.

It was like a bad rerun of "All In The Family."

So we sat there, and we sat there, staring up at the ceiling, hoping the antique cross country skis and life-sized cardboard cutout of Santa Claus wouldn't come crashing down on our table before April returned from the episode of "Family Feud" and got back into waitress mode.

Dinner theater at no extra charge.

When April finally made it back to our table, she noticed that I hadn't touched my clam dish. She wanted to "talk to the boss" to have it taken off the bill. Uh-oh, I thought to myself — no way I wanted to be responsible for fueling the fire again.

Despite my insisting, the clam dish was crossed off the bill. Then, as I presented my credit card to April, she meekly responded with, "Oh, no ... that's not a credit card, is it?" Luckily I had $70 in cash to take care of dinner for four and enough for a tip.

Wouldn't you think someone would have told us earlier in the evening that they're not set up to take credit cards?

We had considered dessert, but after the long wait, decided against it.

Our dinner experience had its ups and downs, but all in all, I think there's a lot of potential here, potential that will be fully realized when the summer residents and campers flock back to Black Lake.

And something tells me that we should get used to the drama that unfolded in front of us the night we were there, since it will probably be part of the ambiance as long as this colorful, fun family from New Jersey that fell out of the sky runs this place.

You can contact restaurant reviewer Walter Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Black Lake Tavern

4448 County Route 6

Black Lake, NY

393-2080

The once proud and popular Lakeside Inn overlooking Black Lake is open once again, serving wood-fired pizza, gourmet burgers and a complete dinner menu.

HOURS: 3 to 9 p.m. seven days a week

Try the freshly made garlic knots or the unique pork "wings" for appetizers.

Wood-fired pizzas come with out-of-the-ordinary toppings and a crust that's fresh, homemade and fantastic. We got the Rocky Balboa Philly Cheese Steak pizza.

Try the Home Run Burger, Angus beef with thick pieces of ham and bacon, great cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion and T.I. dressing.

RATING: 3 forks