By LEAH WEATHERSBY

If you think Italian, you'll probably think of the three Fs - family, food and Frank Sinatra. Wander into Casa D'Italia Market & Cafe, a lunch and dinner place located at 2615 NE 65th St. in the Ravenna District, and you could very easily find husband-wife owners Anthony and Angeli Donatone celebrating this trifecta by cooking old family recipes while arguing over whose father was the bigger fan of Old Blue Eyes - and of course listening to Sinatra's vocal stylings on the restaurant's sound system.

Casa D'Italia opened last September with Anthony as the restaurant's chef and Angeli as baker, hostess and business manager.

Although Anthony, 40, has worked in the restaurant industry for 27 years, he's a first-time chef. Born in New York to a family that loved to cook (though not professionally), he went on to work at numerous restaurants all around the country including Miami and Lake Tahoe, Nev., but his forte was always working the front of the house, serving customers. (In fact, during his career in serving he waited on several celebrities including Elizabeth Taylor.)

Anthony came to Seattle for a New Year's visit in 1990 and decided to stay. Enter his future bride, Angeli - then Vergillo.

Angeli Vergillo, 31, was raised in Bellevue, although her family has close ties to Lake City. Her grandfather, Marty Vergillo, once owned a gas station called Marty's Arco across from a Bill Pierre car lot. Her father, Mickey Vergillo, owned a car dealership called Village Square Motor Car Company at NE 145th Street and Lake City Way. (He later moved the business to what is the current site of Cranium's Coffee Co.)

After graduating from Western Washington University, Angeli became an elementary school teacher - she never thought she'd be a restaurateur.

But then she crossed paths with Anthony.

Angeli remembers their meeting this way: she having a drink at a local restaurant with friends, when Anthony, a manager at the time, started chastising her waiter for making her coffee drink too strong. Later, while on his dinner break, he come out with food and wine for two, explaining that Italians hate to eat alone. Several months later they started dating and they married in 1999.

The couple left Seattle briefly in 1997 when Anthony became part-owner of a restaurant in Florida.

However, that partnership was short-lived. The Donatones moved to New York in 1998 to be closer family after Anthony's father Tony Donatone passed away.

While gone, it's clear that Tony will never be forgotten as long as Casa D'Italia stays in business. A photo of him as brash young man with an upturned collar is placed prominently on the restaurant's west wall along with other family members. Many objects in Casa D'Italia, from serving dishes, to lamps to the eatery's first pot came from Tony's house. Although the photo makes Tony look more like a biker than a cook, Anthony says his father instilled in him a deep love for the culinary arts.

"He's here in spirit," Anthony said, adding that his father used to tell everyone Anthony was a professional cook even when that wasn't strictly accurate. "Now he's gone but I'm a chef," Anthony said.

Passion and decor aside, Anthony's grandmother, Nancy Selvaggi, made a significant contribution to Casa D' Italia as well - her family a secret recipe for her unusual ricotta cheesecake. (If anyone out there can get their hands on it, please mail it to the Seattle Sun immediately.)

After returning to Seattle in 1999 (settling in Wedgwood) the Donatones began looking for a site to open the open place where, as the menu says, the "chef's whim" would reign supreme.

They found it at Zaina, a former Middle Eastern grocery that was closed and had been virtually abandoned. While it took months of work to renovate the building, Anthony said that the backyard patio (for dining and herb growing) made leasing the building a no-brainer.

Improvements are ongoing, but the Donatones say they're proud of the cafe they run now. For reservations or information, call 525-7747