Julio’s

Across from the train station in the old Elk Point section of Clarksburg, Julio’s is a first-rate Italian restaurant with a tin ceiling, carved wooden bar, and plush leather booths. While the food is excellent, and clearly prepared by a chef with culinary expertise, prices are reasonable and service is neighborhood-friendly.

A printed menu lists lots of inviting pastas including four different versions of pasta e fagiole – with cream sauce, with marinara, with potatoes and kale, and en brodo that twinkles with fennel – and primavera made with uncooked vegetables in red sauce. But some of the best dishes are not in print; waitresses recite extremely appetizing lists of the day’s appetizers, entrees and desserts.

For hors d’oeuvre, we loved our “paisano salad,” a cold antipasto plate topped with the kitchen’s jade-green garlic basil dressing, and roasted peppers with gorgonzola served atop tiles of garlic toast. We devoured entrees of vivid red peppers stuffed with hot ground sausage atop a bed of al dente spaghetti noodles, a supremely comforting bowl of pasta fagiole, and a stylish plate of tuna pomodoro. The meal commenced with a basket of swell garlic toast with a smoky taste and concluded with an outrageously rich house-made éclair loaded with French cream and blanketed with good chocolate.