Italian surprises on the menu at Galena restaurant

When a restaurant is named Fried Green Tomatoes, you pretty much know what its signature dish is going to be. In that respect, this Galena, Ill., restaurant is predictable.

Its eponymous appetizer is its biggest seller, accounting for about 1,520 orders a month. Last year, the restaurant went through about 3½ tons of green tomatoes.

But Fried Green Tomatoes also serves up a lot of surprises with innovative Italian-inspired cuisine, including a Neapolitan spin on its namesake classic dish from the American South.

Forty-two-year-old executive chef Joe Kuhse has cooked for as long as he can remember, learning from his mother and grandmother-especially making desserts and canning strawberry and peach jam and pickles. He recalls that the entire family cooked as he and his brothers were growing up in the tiny town of Elkader in northeast Iowa.

He got a job in a pizza parlor when he was 14 and for seven years owned a restaurant in the old opera house in Volga, Iowa. Today, at Fried Green Tomatoes, located in a two-story limestone building that is one of Galena's oldest, Kuhse is doing the kind of creative cooking he most enjoys.

Let's start with those fried green tomatoes. Doesn't that dish belong to southern cuisine rather than on an Italian menu? True, but there's a big difference in preparation. In the South, the tomatoes are usually coated with cornmeal, fried and served plain. We prepare ours with marinara sauce and with plenty of mozzarella and parmesan. It is a reflection of our cooking style.

What is that style? How do you categorize your cuisine? We call it "country Italian." Certainly, it is a lot more than "everyday Italian." We don't do pizza or calzones and we flavor-up our pastas -- such as ravioli con fungi stuffed with wild mushrooms and tossed with a surprisingly spicy compare sauce (made with tomatoes and cream). We just added 11 new entr½es and most of them start with something classic, but feature unusual sauces and side dishes.

What are other examples of tweaking basic Italian cuisine? We serve veal chop with fig-cherry sauce and grilled root vegetables and prepare seared duck breasts with sweet-and-sour grapefruit sauce instead of orange. For osso bucco, we use pork rather than veal shank. Pork is more available and affordable. We cook it until it's falling off the bone.

Do you incorporate natural ingredients, local products? Whenever possible, we do. Local people deliver wild morels, fresh asparagus, handpicked red raspberries and other produce in season.

Do you live in town? I live in a big old Victorian house in Dubuque, Iowa, about 15 minutes west of Galena. I just love small towns -- where everyone knows everyone else.

Do you cook at home? I'm single, but I love to host big parties. At Christmas, I fill three 8-foot-long banquet tables with hors d'oeuvres, candies, cookies and desserts.

What do you do in your free time? I work in my yard. It's not very big, but I have tubs planted with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, green beans -- just enough for one person. I go to the farmers market early Saturday morning in Dubuque. I also take long walks at the Mines of Spain, a nature preserve along the Mississippi.

What would people be surprised to know about you? That I didn't go to culinary school. I went right to work from high school. I have a huge collection of cookbooks -- mostly church cookbooks, where the ladies' names are on the recipes. You know these are bound to be good because those ladies have a reputation to uphold.

Try Kuhse's fried green tomatoes at home or at the restaurant, 213 Main St., Galena, (815) 777-3938, www.friedgreen.com.