To sum it up, Joan rocks...and she rocks hard. Before we even sealed the deal with her, she sent us over a three page proposal of a to-die-for Italian Honeymoon itinerary along with about 23 scrumptious, glossy, drool-inducing hotel catalogs. We love every single one of her ideas, and aside from the teeny tiny issue of how the hell are we going to afford this, we were ready to just say "BOOK IT ALL!" Spending hours and hours on the internet trying to figure this all out by myself now seems like the most insane gameplan I ever had.

So far this is the plan:

Oct 23: Fly from LA to Naples

Oct 24: Ravello/ Hotel Palazzo Sasso
*Sidetrip to a Mozarella Farm and some of the coastal towns like Positano

Oct 27: AnaCapri/ Capri Palace or Quisisana
*Relax like superstars

Oct 29: Florence/ Lungarno Apartments (no need to splurge here on a fancy/shmancy hotel)
*Sidetrip to Sienna/Chianti to visit the wineries and as much gelato as I can stuff down my throat

Nov 2: Venice/ Cipriani

Nov 4: Fly from Venice to NY

After my imagined (but yet to be achieved) pre-wedding starvation plan, Greg and I intend to stuff our faces heartily in beautiful Italia.

At an East Village Southern Italian

"This way, please." The friendly young maître'd at Frank in the East Village was standing on the sidewalk and motioned me inside.

Not so fast. A red-faced waiter charged out the door, brandishing a plate of spaghetti. I jumped aside in the nick of time and then cautiously made my way into the dining room.

Eating at Frank is like being caught in the middle of the famous cabin scene in the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera , in which more and more people keep pouring through the door as Groucho tries to order food. ("Steward! Make that three hard-boiled eggs and some roast beef, rare, medium, well-done and over-done …. ")

"It's a little cramped in here, I'm afraid," said the manager, a masterful understatement. He unfolded a chair and wedged it between a glass-fronted cabinet and a teensy Formica table decorated with cheery yellow daisies. Three of us, holding our breath, just managed to squeeze in (this was, of course, before we'd finished a bowl of "Grandma Carmela's rigatoni with meatballs"). If a waiter had needed a wine glass from the cupboard behind me, half the room would've had to get up. The view from my seat was of the back of a man who had the girth of Henry VIII and was sporting a black XXL T-shirt that bore the legend: "Shuck me, Suck Me, Acme Oyster Bar, New Orleans."

There are no oysters on the menu at Frank, but there's mozzarella di buffala flown in from Naples, wonderful homemade pasta, splendid roast chicken and salads made with the freshest ingredients.

The restaurant's two small storefront rooms, each with its own street entrance, aren't much larger than Groucho's stateroom. A bar takes up half the space in one dining room, an open kitchen in the one next-door. Both rooms have faded yellow pressed-tin ceilings hung with small, genteel Venetian glass chandeliers. Specials are chalked on a blackboard, wine bottles are lined up on shelves and racks (or anywhere where there's space), and the whole place is cluttered with bric-a-brac, jugs and vases. A beat-up, gilt-framed reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is tilted over the entrance to the bathroom. Every so often, there's an exciting "whoosh" from the kitchen as a sheet of flames leaps up from a pan and dies down again. The unidentifiable pop music is deafening. Frank may be short on comfort, but it certainly has atmosphere.

I wouldn't have come here at all had a friend not asked me to find a restaurant in the East Village where eight of us could eat before a concert one night (Frank does not take reservations, and I hate to wait in line). The restaurant's owner, Franki Prisinzano, has two other places in the East Village, Lil' Frankie's Pizza and a new restaurant called Supper. I called Supper first. The reception was gruff. "We don't take reservations. First come, first served," I was told. "Ain't nothing I can do about it-those are the rules." But Frank makes an exception for eight or more. "You got a cell?" asked the man who booked the table. "Give me the number so I can call to make sure you're on your way."

There was already a line in the street outside when we arrived (in the winter, they have a huge heater there to warm the people waiting). Behind the bar is a refectory table, and part of it had been set aside for the eight of us. Even so, we weren't allowed to sit down "until all of our party was present and complete," as the hostess told us firmly with a sunny smile. "Those are the rules." By the time we had ordered a drink at the bar, of course, the others had arrived. That was when I discovered that Frank accepts cash only.

The food is not dirt-cheap, with main courses costing between $9.95 and $22.95. The restaurant boasts a fine, solid Italian wine list, but it's hardly dirt-cheap, either. There are bottles on it priced at $200. Who walks around with cash like that in their pocket?

Despite these annoying details, Frank is an appealing restaurant, not just for its quirky atmosphere, but for the good, Southern Italian food that's served in hearty portions. Begin dinner with an order of grilled garlic bread-thick sourdough wedges that come topped with melted cheese. It's great with a glass of Chianti. The salads are big enough to feed two or more. Shaved fennel salad with olive oil and Parmesan, though it needed salt, was a good dish to pass around the table and nibble on. The roasted beet salad with arugula and goat cheese packed plenty of flavor, as did a lively end-of-summer salad made with avocado slices, corn, tomatoes and chopped Bibb lettuce. Frank does straightforward dishes very well, like beef carpaccio with slivered Parmesan and arugula, or silken slices of prosciutto with perfectly ripe melon.

The handmade ravioli of the day-light, airy pillows of dough with a cheese filling in a cream sauce-was superb. Handmade gnocchi had pretty much disintegrated into the sauce (as is its wont), but the dish did have a strong tomato flavor, laced with basil and Parmesan. Grandma Carmela's rigatoni, served with tiny meatballs in tomato sauce, pulls no punches. And if black spaghetti with sautéed calamari is on the list of specials, order it. It was excellent, done with a lighter hand than some of the other pastas.

"Uncle Michael's spiced meatloaf" is the size of a bowling ball and comes with gravy and gratin potatoes. As impressive as it looked, it was dry. Friends of mine have been urging me to try Frank's roast chicken. With its crusty, rosemary-scented skin, it is, indeed, "far better than anything you'd get in a fancy restaurant," if a trifle salty, and was accompanied by olives, mashed potatoes and cooked tomatoes. The seared salmon filet, while nothing out of the ordinary, is beautifully cooked with lemon, capers, sage and arugula.

Desserts include a perfectly pleasant tiramisu, ricotta cheesecake and a large bowl of peach sorbet that feeds four.

Despite the waiting, the noise and the cash-only policy, I like Frank. The waiters and waitresses are exceedingly nice and the food is good. I called a friend who dined with me there on one of my visits. "If I lived around the corner, I'd go there once in a while, at an off-hour when you don't have to wait," he said. "But being a New Yorker, I can't stand the noise. It's the sort of place you'd look forward to coming to if you lived in, say, Burlington, Vt."

"It sounds great," I said. Since I had just finished reading Kitchen Confidential –the best-selling paperback by Les Halles chef Anthony Bourdain, in which he claims you can't get fresh fish in a New York restaurant on a Monday–I couldn't resist asking him what he had to say about that.

Mr. Pasternack leapt back with a start. He covered his head with his hands and groaned. "Everyone's asking me!" he said. "That's one guy's opinion. If you ask me, Tuesday or Wednesday are the worst days! I get my fish shipped from all over the world, and Monday's one of the best days of the week."

A native of Long Beach, N.Y., Mr. Pasternack is so passionate about seafood that he spends his days off fishing. (He and two friends had just caught 262 pounds of fluke, some of which was on the menu.) But if anyone wonders why Esca is packed for lunch and dinner every day of the week–Monday included–they have only to taste his "crudo," which has become famous in the year since the restaurant opened.

It's a work of art. The "tasting" consists of a trio of glistening, almost translucent fish on a gold-rimmed platter, served under a veneer of olive oil and a sprinkling of briny fleur de sel. Depending on the catch of the day, the fish might be black bass with toasted pine nuts, tuna with a dark-green olive oil and chives, weakfish with preserved lemon, or hamachi with tiny capers. The steelhead salmon Mr. Pasternack mentioned consists of three small copper fillets lightly coated with oil, salt and pink peppercorns. One tartare was made with razor clams seasoned with chilies, scallions and mint and scooped back into their elongated shells. The tasting of marinated fish is also extraordinary: sardines with pepperonata, anchovies with pickled baby leeks, and mackerel with baby fennel and wild fennel pollen from Italy that adds an aroma of anise.

The restaurant, in Manhattan Plaza (the red brick high-rise on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 43rd Street), is co-owned by Mr. Pasternack and Mario Batali, of Lupa and Babbo, with partners Joseph Bastianich and Simon Dean. The no-nonsense setting consists of two rooms done up in pale green and yellow, with stone floors, a row of booths and a small bar. There's a desultory display of vegetable platters at the entrance of the first room, where picture windows give out onto a terrace. In the inner room, fish heads poke through a pile of crushed ice. Unlike the crudo presentation, neither of these displays could be called a work of art.

This spring, I spent several days in Naples, but nothing I ate, apart from the fritto misto, came close to the seafood at Esca (whose version of the fried-fish assortment is one of its weakest dishes). The menu opens with the crudo–there's a selection of close to a dozen–followed by the altro (first course), primi (pasta), which can be shared by the table, and secondi (main course). Portions aren't large, but the prices add up, with first courses averaging $12, and pasta and main dishes in the mid- to high 20's. Wines are also expensive, though the list–which the helpful sommelier will guide you through–has interesting Italian wines from the South.

The best buffalo mozzarella comes from just outside Naples, so when I saw insalata Caprese (one of the few non-fish dishes on the menu) I ordered it, hoping for the delightfully creamy, sourish concoction I remember. But on this day, alas, the mozzarella does have a Monday feel: It's dry. The grilled octopus (another great memory from Naples) makes up for it, however. Mr. Pasternack first simmers it with red wine and, of all things, wine corks–a technique he learned from an Neapolitan woman who briefly had a restaurant in Manhattan. He says he doesn't know why, but when the octopus is cooked with the corks, it emerges particularly tender.

Most of the pasta is topped with seafood in unusual combinations: macaroni with crabmeat and sea urchin, whole-wheat spaghetti with anchovies and walnuts, ravioli stuffed with shrimp and sorrel with leek and nettle butter. Mr. Pasternack's spaghetti with lobster is sensational. Chunks of the meat are cooked with garlic, chilis and tomatoes, served on pasta with mint. I've never had anything like it.

While other restaurants buy halibut filets, Mr. Pasternack takes the heads and sautés the cheeks, which are moister and have a denser texture. For a fish, that in Italian, goes under the poetic name "hippoglosso," he creates a simple, summery dish with basil and yellow tomatoes in a light, mustardy sauce. He skewers giant, fresh Honduran shrimp, heads on, and cooks them on "the black steel" with corn, zucchini and oven-dried tomatoes. Wild sturgeon from Washington state, which has a rich, flavorful yellow flesh, is tender and juicy, seared with thin strips of pancetta and served with roasted beets and lamb's lettuce.

For dessert, a plate of Italian cheeses with figs and cherries is nice. So is the rich chocolate-pudding cake with mocha sauce, or the black currant semifreddo with a rich goo of zabaglione and black currant underneath. Caramel gelato "drowned" in espresso, served with walnut crocante, and the chocolate-hazelnut parfait topped with espresso granita and caramelized bananas are just fine, too. You could almost be in Naples.

Getting a table at Esca, which accepts reservations a month in advance, is not easy. But there's a better chance in summer, when the terrace is open. One morning, I called at the last minute and got lucky with a table at 8 p.m. "But it's going to have to be outside," said the woman on the phone.

I was delighted. When we got there, however, I understood the "but." The terrace, which has a fountain with lions spewing water, is best viewed from inside the restaurant rather than experienced first-hand. The umbrella-covered tables are right under the air-conditioning units of the towering apartment block, making it about as peaceful as dining under the funnel of a ship. (Indeed, we felt distinctly cabin-class compared with inside, and service was erratic, too.) The food, however, was great–even on a Monday.

ESCA

* * *

402 West 43rd Street

564-7272

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fine

Wine list: Excellent, expensive, with many lesser-known Italian vintages

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses, lunch, $18 to $22; dinner, $24 to $27

Lunch: Monday to Saturday, noon to 2:30 p.m.

Dinner: Monday, 5:30 to 10:30 p.m.; Tuesday to Saturday, 5 to 11:30 p.m.; Sunday, 4:30 to 10:30 p.m.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

On my way there after a concert on a recent evening, I called from the cab to tell them we were running late.

"Is this Sandro's?" I asked over the bad connection.

"No," replied a man. "This is Adolfo."

A few minutes later, we pulled up next to a jaunty yellow awning outside a small storefront that used to be Siena. An old black car was parked in front; instead of numbers, its license plate boasted the name "Sandro." The maître d' (Adolfo, presumably) suavely led us to a table in an alcove by the window, which was quieter than the cramped, noisy dining room. The pale yellow walls are devoid of decoration but for the frosted pale-blue sconces (each one shaped like a fez), and the tables are set with white cloths and votive candles. It's boisterous and jolly, and it feels just like Italy.

The restaurant is named after its chef, Sandro Fioriti, who told me over the telephone that his father wanted him to be a priest, but that after a brief stab at the profession, he decided he'd rather be a dishwasher (as Peter Cook famously said, he could have been a judge, but he didn't have the Latin). He worked his way up through the ranks of the kitchen at Cacciani, a restaurant in Frascati just outside Rome, to become the chef. Eight years later, he was brought to New York by Tony May to open the original Sandro's on the Upper East Side, right by the 59th Street bridge. It closed after seven years in '92, and Mr. Fioriti went on to cook at Nello, Coco Pazzo and Sapore di Mare in East Hampton before opening his own place last fall, which has attracted a following among his former uptown customers.

The waiter brought us a bottle of wine and then, drawing himself up like a tenor about to give a demonstration at a master class, began to recite the list of specials. I hadn't heard a performance like this since the days before the management at Da Silvano, a Tuscan restaurant in the Village, was finally persuaded to print out the day's specials. Sandro's list goes on forever, and you can hear it repeated ad nauseam around the room to groups of glazed customers. It infuriated my companion so much that he lay awake that night thinking about it, and called me the following day to say that he'd finally figured out the problem: "They don't print the specials because no one knows how to spell them in English."

Sandro's is one of a handful of Italian restaurants in New York to serve the Roman specialty carciofi alla giudia, deep-fried artichokes that are served in trattorie in the Trastevere, the old ghetto. They look like bronzed sunflowers, a veritable dish of the Renaissance; Mr. Fioriti places them on a bed of shredded, oiled radicchio. For a special of the day, he slivers baby artichokes and sautés them with sliced seppie (cuttlefish)–one of those simple, perfect Italian dishes that needs no further embellishment.

At every restaurant I went to in Rome, they were serving puntarelle, which I saw piled high in the open markets. But it's uncommon in New York. Mr. Fioriti serves it with a light, lemony dressing that acts as a pleasant foil to the bitter leaves.

I hadn't expected to find black truffles–not only with such pronounced taste, but in such profusion–in a restaurant like Sandro's, where the most expensive dish costs 20 bucks. But a shower of slivered truffles comes, unexpectedly, over a plate of soft,

glistening red peppers marinated in olive oil with salted anchovies. The truffles are insistent, their pungent aroma defying the anchovies to drown them out. A flurry of truffles also falls upon the roast organic lamb, which is accompanied by crisp, floury roast potatoes. This is food cooked by someone who loves to eat, not by a chef who's trying to shock or show off.

There are many interesting pasta dishes on the menu, including one of my favorites, spaghettini al limone, which Mr. Fioriti says he invented. I've had it elsewhere and make it myself, but I've never had spaghetti tossed with pepperoncino (red pepper), chunks of scallops and sea urchin. Surprisingly, the spiciness of the red pepper doesn't overpower the delicate sea urchin. It's wonderful. Mr. Fioriti also adds a shot of pepperoncino to the sauce served on bucatini (a long, thin, hollow pasta), which is cooked very much al dente and topped with pancetta, fava beans and mussels. The faint hint of red pepper pervades the dish, bringing all the ingredients into focus.

Roast suckling pig (another Roman dish) is a little dry, the crackling a bit thick and chewy, but it's delicious nevertheless, the skin scented from a thick crust of toasted fennel seed. On the side, we had a nice, garlicky dish of broccoli rabe. The Milanese, an enormous breaded veal chop pounded with the long bone still on, covers the plate, topped with arugula and baby-tomato salad. It's enough for two. The breading is crisp, the meat pink and juicy.

For dessert, the chocolate tart is rather dry. "It should have chocolate sauce, but it's too late for the kitchen now," said our waiter. (Well, it was after 11 o'clock.) There was a chocolate cake, too, which I would have preferred without the liqueur in it, but this is how they serve it in Rome and Naples. Both the "country style" apple cake–more of a pie à la mode–and very fresh pineapple "carpaccio" cut in paper-thin slices get high marks. Mr. Fioriti's best dessert is the polenta, a creamy yellow pool drizzled with a red sauce that looks like ketchup but is made with berries. It's on a par with his fried artichokes.

I once made Elizabeth David's recipe for carciofi alla giudia. Following her instructions, I heated a large pan of olive oil and added the artichokes, which began to hiss and crackle alarmingly. To make them crisper, she said, stand back and toss in a little water. I did. The flames shot to the ceiling, almost setting the kitchen on fire, leaving a trail of soot over the cupboards and walls, too. It's a dish better left to chefs like Mr. Fioriti. So if you can't get to Trastevere this spring, head to Chelsea.

Sandro's

* *

200 Ninth Avenue at 22nd Street

212-633-8033

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Fairly boisterous

Wine list: Excellent, with many bargains in Italian wines

Credit cards: American Express only

Price range: Main courses $10 to $20

Lunch: 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., Beginning April 9

Dinner: Sunday to Thursday, 5:30 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday to 11:30 p.m.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor

Now 48, Mr. Richman has a Dorian Gray-like stage persona-boyish, ebullient, passionate. (He did sport a rumpled suit with his T-shirt, instead of his trademark jeans; maybe they were in the wash). Accompanied by drummer Tommy Larkins (who stood behind a tom-tom, snare and cymbals-it would be a stretch to call it a drum kit), Mr. Richman gyrated spiritedly, like an earnest teenager trying out for a funky cheerleading squad.

When the crowd clapped along, he encouraged them: "If you're not going to dance, at least clap. It warms up the atmosphere."

According to conventional wisdom, Mr. Richman threw away a promising punk career-having recorded the classic "Modern Lovers" album at age 21, in 1972-and withdrew into a strange childlike world, trading in searing garage-rock about obsessions and psychoses to mindless piffle about the Ice Cream Man.

But in fact, Mr. Richman had precociously perceived that, in the long run, it was punk music that would seem like greasy kid stuff, and that his homespun homilies would prove more enduring. (He stated as much on a monologue delivered on the 1991 live album "Having a Party With Jonathan Richman," disparaging his earlier snottiness.)

Of course, he still admires the Velvet Underground; in his musical paean to them, performed on March 4, he commends their "sound as stark as black-and-white stripes." And for every tossed-off ditty extolling parties or the corner store, Mr. Richman is still capable of going deep and dark. Performing songs like "Affection" and "Let Her Go Into the Darkness," he tossed off perceptive, mature philosophy disguised by deceptively singsongy riffs.

After years of rejecting his roots, Mr. Richman now dips into his punk catalogue in his live act. (On March 4, he played "Girlfriend.") The songs seem neither like artifacts nor towering achievements that dwarf his later work, just part of the same heartfelt oeuvre

Mr. Richman doesn't grant many interviews or get personal on stage, but fans know his marriage broke up several years ago, and that jolt seems to have reinvigorated his songwriting. He's penning lyrics from present-day uncertainty; his last album was called I'm So Confused . And "You Must Ask the Heart," whose conceit is that it's being sung by the listener's brain, counsels: "Don't ask me about love, 'cause I'm just the wrong guy. I don't know how love happens, and I don't know why."

New numbers introduced on March 4 included "Couples Must Argue," "My Heart Needed Repair When I Met Her," and "I'm Not Obsessed With Her" ("It's strange, if you know me," he sang. "Is something wrong?"). On the lighter side, he also uncorked a brilliant two-minute rocking summation of the attitude of his hometown, Boston: "It's great/ it's cold/ it's hostile/ you asshole!"

Sometimes Mr. Richman's songs backtrack from their initial promise; instead of following a great idea through to its conclusion, he'll just repeat verses, or sing them again in Spanish. But-as with "Couples Must Argue"-the ideas are so great, you cut him some slack.

There was a bootlegger taping show, which seemed odd. Jonathan's appeal is so much about being in his presence, watching him. Despite noble attempts to bring him to a wider audience-by Conan O'Brien, the Farrelly brothers, even Mr. Richman himself, who has re-recorded neglected classics from deleted albums-he remains too quirky for mass consumption.

Like those of the Grateful Dead or Bruce Springsteen, his infrequent records don't do him justice; he needs to be seen to be believed in.