Just as herbs and spices infuse food with flavor, so a chef infuses a restaurant with personality and spirit.  I found the especially evident at Mangia, an Italian eatery in Palmer Township.

The place was packed when I visited on a recent Friday night, yet at evening's end, after what must have been several stressful hours in the kitchen chef/owner Sal Cardamuro was out in the dining room, still smiling.  Actually, Cardamuro was jovial even as he joined one table then another, sharing conversation as well as occasional shots of sambuca.

As a result, dining here felt like we were guests in Cardamuro's home, rather than customers at his business.  Sure the food and ambiance were fine, but what could have dinner in just another neighborhood Italian restaurant was transformed into a celebration of the moment, thanks to Cardamuro's joie de vivre.

It's been about four months now since Mangia moved into its new home just off William Penn Highway.  The restaurant's residential environs seem more appropriate, given its gregarious spirit, than it previous home near Sam's Club where it opened in 1999, in the midst of Whitehall's mall madness.

Except for a sun porch with white lights running along the ribs in the ceiling, Mangia's ambience is rather nondescript, although pleasant enough.

Murals and trompe l'oeil painting from the previous location didn't get repeated; the wall decor features, instead, mirrors and framed photos of Italy.  White tablecloths and bottles of San Pellegrino top the tables.

Mangia's menu features Italian standards - a handful of baked pastas, about a dozen pastas with varying sauces, and chicken, veal and fish entrees that include marsala, parmigiana and piccata preparations.  Hoagies, sandwiches, calzone, stromboli and brick oven pizza are also available.

For dinner, it's the list of daily specials that are most intriguing: spinach rigatoni sauteed with chicken, portobello mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes, served with wine Gorgonzola cream sauce, for example; or filet of red snapper crusted with oreganato bread crumbs in wine butter sauce; or ravioli stuffed with sausage and broccoli, sauteed with tomatoes, broccoli rabe and shrimp, and served in wine tomato sauce.

Handwritten (without prices) and photocopied, the specials list was a bit difficult to read, but legible enough to make sauteed portobello mushrooms ($11.95), with sun-dried tomatoes in Marsala wine cream sauce, sound pretty darn appetizing.

Well, appetizing it was, for sure, but also every bit as delectable as it sounded, and then some.  Dense with flavor, the earthy mushroom slices were complemented by rich and rather elegant Marsala wine sauce.  Chewy sun-dried tomatoes contributed another note of texture, along with the depth of its concentrated tomato essence.

So savory was the sauce, I couldn't bear sending even one luscious lick back to the kitchen.  Thankfully, I didn't have to.  Instead, I shamelessly dunked and dipped the remaining contents of the breadbasket - dense, hearty slices - into that sauce, until both disappeared.

Dinner salads (included with entrees) were standard fare; the restaurant's signature balsamic vinaigrette was not the best I've had, nor the worst either.

Linguine with verdure ($12.95) called up memories of summer's bounty in a bowl.  The generous portion of pasta - tossed with spinach, broccoli, artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and roasted peppers in wine sauce - offered a melange of flavors rather like a circus with so many acts going on at once, you can't focus on one.

An entree from the day's specials, a wahoo filet ($23.95) crusted with black pepper and served with Marsala Dijon sauce, was excellent, if you like pepper, that is.  The thick piece of fish, cooked just right, was nicely balanced by the bite of its coating and the rich, velvety finish of the sauce.  A side of pasta was topped with fresh-flavored red sauce touched with sweetness.

Mangia's sweet endings, presented in dizzying variety on a pastry tray, are imported from New York.  Cream puffs, cheesecakes and lots more were minor temptations; it was the small rum cake ($6.95) that capture my heart from the start.

Served in a paper sleeve, this oblong, individually baked cake, stuffed with cream filling, sat in a tablespoon or so of rum *yes, the real thing).  Obviously the cake's blandness was intentional - all the better to soak up the the spirit and become one with its intoxicating rum flavor.

As local Italian restaurants go, Mangia is a good one.  For its let-the-good-times-roll spirit, and its fine food and service, I will look for opportunities to return.

Dinner for two, which included a shared appetizer and dessert and two entrees, totaled $74 with tax and tip.