The signature dish at KC Italian restaurant is popular. I order something even better

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Whenever I eat at Garozzo’s, it feels like a special occasion — even if I’m just sneaking off to treat myself to lunch.

The feeling starts as soon as I get near the original location, in Kansas City’s historic Columbus Park neighborhood just east of downtown. It’s like I’ve stepped into another country, or another time.

Walking past the brick buildings that hug close to the street and the fire hydrants painted the tricolor green, white and red of Italy’s flag, I imagine the old Italian neighborhood in years gone by.

I’m not saying I discovered the place. Everyone knows about the restaurant’s signature dish, the Chicken Spiedini Garozzo. I like that too, but it’s another meal I crave when I head through the doors at 526 Harrison St.

My favorite is the Cavatelli Catania: pasta with sauteed mushrooms, red onions, crushed red pepper flakes (which add a spicy kick) and garlic in a crushed tomato sauce, topped with Romano cheese. And I get it the way owner Mike Garozzo recommends: adding one Italian sausage and one meatball, served with a spoon to make the most of the sauce. And a side of bread, again, for the sauce. (It’s $19.50, plus another $4.50 for meatballs, Italian sausage or meat sauce.)

This is a light plate for Garozzo’s — Mike calls it a summer pasta — but especially with my add-ons, still a substantial meal, which I destroy in about 10 minutes. “You got a good appetite for a little guy,” Mike says.

And it’s true: When I get the chance to come here, I bring a hollow leg.

At this place, I have to take advantage and enjoy every moment.

I started coming here after I got hired at The Star and returned home to Kansas City. I’d spent years living in places where you won’t find something like Columbus Park’s Old World vibe. So as a breaking news reporter in my 30s, living in a little apartment downtown, it became my place to savor life in the big city.

I even took to buying the Garozzo-brand Sugo, Sicilian-style tomato sauce, at the supermarket downtown to cook at home. It’s the same sauce recipe they make in the restaurant for the Cavatelli Catania, which is an original creation of Mike’s. He named it “Cavatelli” for the style of pasta and “Catania” for the second-largest city in Sicily, where his paternal grandparents hailed from.

As it happens, Catania holds memories for me, too.

During these years I traveled quite a bit, including a trip to Italy that took me through Rome, Naples and even Catania, where I had the good fortune to catch the local New Year’s Eve celebrations. They had a big concert that night in the Piazza Duomo, a square dominated by an ancient black basalt statue of an elephant that is said to have a magic power to predict volcanic eruptions of nearby Mount Etna.

That night, the folks who owned the hostel where I was staying had their whole family over for a holiday dinner, and they invited us guests to join them, packing long tables in a great hall that looked like it was built in the 17th century. Between the atmosphere and the music and people speaking Italian and the sense of community, it again felt like being transported back in time. I never forgot it.

Back home, Garozzo’s became my place for special occasions.

For my parents’ 25th wedding anniversary, I took them out to dinner there and surprised them by inviting the whole extended family — a plan that went awry as relatives unfamiliar with the neighborhood ended up lost, wandering the streets. (Yes, we could have gone to the other location in Overland Park, but it’s just not the same.)

Then, when I met my wife, I took her there for one of our first dates. A few months later we went back to introduce our parents over dinner. And pretty soon we got married.

As a consequence, I gave up my apartment and took up a more suburban lifestyle. Mowing the lawn and feeding the cats keep me pretty busy these days. So I don’t get to visit the old neighborhood as much as I’d like.

But when I do, I go to Garozzo’s. I get my favorite dish, with the extra meatball and sausage, the spoon for the sauce and the bread, and I come hungry.

And I don’t need a to-go box.