Luigi's Italian Food

Sometimes it’s been months. Sometimes it has been years, but every time I walk through the door of Luigi’s — Colorado Springs’ definitive Italian restaurant — it feels like I was just there yesterday.
Nothing has changed. Not the red-andwhite checkered tablecloths on the tiny tables. Not the dusty Chianti bottles hung on the walls. And thankfully, not the fromscratch family recipes. This year, Luigi’s is celebrating 50 years of serving those dishes, making it the oldest family-owned eatery in the city. In the past half-century, it has stayed true to timeless American-Italian traditions that now make it the Godfather of the restaurant scene.
The owners say it’s the lack of change that crams the restaurant with loyal diners.
“Everything else in the world may change,” Gina Costley said by phone recently. “But the homemade tortelacci stays the same. That’s what people love.”
Costley’s parents opened the original Luigi’s (named for her grandfather) in an old service station next door in 1958.