By LAURA MOYER

THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Matteo ’s ambitious menu is a Salvadoran-Italian melting pot, a cultural exchange of dishes like manicotti, platanos fritos, gnocchi in vodka sauce, carne asada, calzones and pupusas.

It’s daunting just to make your way through the 126-item menu, and you have to wonder: Can a brand-new restaurant do justice to the cuisines of two cultures with swift preparation, quality ingredients, pleasant service and a bit of flair?

Matteo ’s can and does.

It’s in just its fifth week of business at the Lee’s Hill Shopping Center in Spotsylvania County, but the staff seems on top of things and capable of producing any of the dishes quickly and well.

A phone call to the restaurant after my two review visits shed some light on this. Matteo ’s is owned by experienced restaurateur Eladio Pacheco, whose Pancho Villa Mexican restaurants have made inroads in the Fredericksburg area over the past dozen years. Matteo ’s employs two chefs, one for the Italian dishes and one for the Salvadoran offerings.

Only after one has made the difficult decision what to order is there leisure to look around at the attractive, unpretentious storefront. Décor is simple and bright-cheerful murals jazzed up with strings of colored pepper-shaped lights.

Then comes the food, and lots of it.

On the Salvadoran side, we sampled chicken, beef and shrimp dishes but couldn’t get to the fish, pork chops, stews or soups. What we tried came with good traditional side dishes of shredded lettuce with cucumbers, fluffy yellow rice and salty beans simmered to a thick black soup.

The chicken of the pollo asado ($9.25) was a thigh-and-leg portion, roasted skin-on and bursting with mixed herbs. It was juicy and tender, its meat practically sliding off the bone.

The plato tipico ($11) features a thinly sliced and grilled beef steak, a tough cut of meat but tenderized and infused with flavor by marinating. This dish also is served with a couple of pupusas, thick corn tortillas filled in this case with spiced, chopped pork. They’re topped with plenty of crisp pickled cabbage.