Restaurant review: Il Faro in Menands

If you're going to open an Italian restaurant, it stands to reason you'll be armed with your Nonna's to-die-for recipes or ready to share your delicious take on regional Italian classics.

While your brain is processing paint fumes and the full-length unfinished cinderblock wall that gives more of a prison vibe than anything Italian or lighthousey, Lamoreaux, a former attorney, lays down the law.

No one can ruin a Caprese salad ($9) unless they serve up ragged slabs of tasteless, pale orange supermarket tomatoes, which Il Faro does, with a hairy caterpillar of feverishly pulverized garlic-cilantro spread reluctantly resting on top.

Seafood salad antipasta ($12) — an attractive, bouncy plate of squid rings, chilled shrimp and conch over arugula — turned out to be flavorless rubber, as if all were washed and rinsed squeaky clean.

Worst of all, eggplant rollatini ($13) held us in appalled fascination: folded in halves like bee-stung tacos, these six breaded and thickly sliced sponges were so swollen with oil my companion could stomach only one before throwing in the towel.

Nonna's special sauce (I'm making that part up) is one of the saddest Italian gravies ever spooned over pasta: largely bland with an overriding high note of canned tomato paste.

[...] there was the unexpected jaw-breaking thrill of almost raw diced carrots bopping about a warm, creamy orzo side, as fun to eat as gobstoppers in porridge, and Russian roulette of crunchy, barely roasted Brussels sprouts rolling around in an oil slick with their other halves softened to a subtle mush.

Plates to brighten our meals were desserts: crisp cannoli shells freshly filled with sugary cream ($5) and an enormous rectangle of espresso-soaked tiramisu ($9), both produced by Rispoli's Pastry Shop in New Jersey, so alarm bells rang when our waitress tried to...