As educated diners, Beard Foundation members can certainly tell you that the food of Italy is a mosaic of regional tastes and myriad styles of cooking. But what about Italian food in America? Besides the inherent differences between a Sicilian and a Tuscan restaurant, for example-both of which, our experience has shown, often include dishes from all over the boot-shaped peninsula and a few that have never been seen there, anyway-are there regional distinctions that can be drawn between, say, an Italian restaurant in Washington, D. C., and one in Kansas City?

What unifies them perhaps more than anything are the tenets of Italian cooking: a reliance on fresh, seasonal ingredients, simple preparations, and an affinity for olive oil. The Gruppo Ristoratori Italiani has also helped unite them by supporting and promoting traditional, fine-dining Italian restaurants throughout America.

This month at the Beard House, we are welcoming a quartet of GRI chefs from points northeast, mid-Atlantic, and midwest to prepare what promises to be a Great Italian dinner, a snapshot of the state of Italian food in America.

Lombardy-born Cesare Lanfranconi has been executive chef of Roberto Donna's Galileo since May 1999. After graduating from hotel school, he worked at the majestic Hotel Splendido in Portofino, and the renowned Gualtiero Marchesi in Milan, at that time the only Michelin three-star restaurant in all of Italy. From there, he came stateside to a position at the Lodge at Vail in Colorado. In 1995 he became sous-chef at Galileo, where he continues to impress D.C. diners with his soulful Italian cooking.

Joseph Messina and Brian Limitone have crafted a menu at Tuscan Oven in Norwalk, Connecticut, that ranges from the traditional (think pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage) to the outrageous (horseradish-crusted filet mignon with grappa-pomegranate glaze and sweet potato-pancetta hash). The formula, which caught the attention of diners at Tuscan Oven's first location, in Mount Kisco, New York, has proved a smashing success in Norwalk. Messina's father ran an Italian delicatessen in Westchester County, so you might say Italian food was in his blood.

The same is true of Jasper Mirabile, Jr., who took the reins of his family's restaurant in 1984. At that time the restaurant was already 30 years old, and the fresh culinary air that he brought to the traditional Italian menu-with specialties from Sicily, Tuscany, and Piedmont-continues to blow. No less an influential Italian restaurant critic than Luigi Veronelli wrote, "Jasper Jr. offers you an inventive cuisine tied to the values of the past."