Posted by BrianYarvin, July 11, 2008 at 10:15 AM
There are stores you visit when you need a little something—an apple, a quart of milk, or a bottle of soda—and others when you need to do regular shopping. But what about when you need to buy more? Warehouse clubs? Two carts at your local supermarket? What about a place that specializes in big quantities without memberships or requirements? In New Jersey, the answer is Corrado's Family Affair in Clifton.
I first visited Corrado's when someone recommended it as a place to buy Italian specialties and perhaps, at one time long ago, it was just fine for that. Today though, like most other New Jersey businesses that began as Italian groceries, Corrado's has morphed into something else: the place to buy volume. Cases of San Marzano tomatoes, eight ounce cans of anchovy fillets, whole cheeses, and bulk packages of meat and poultry.
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 24, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Fiore
284 Grand Street, Brooklyn NY 11211 (near Roebling; map); 718-782-8222
Must-Haves: Lardo pizza; cavatelli with broccoli rabe and sausage; skirt steak with salsa verde; fried calamari and zucchini
What You'll Spend: $30 for two courses, a glass of wine, tax, and tip
Grade: B+
Remember back in the day, when going out to eat an Italian meal in New York was not an extravagance or much of a financial commitment? Those were the days of red sauce; chicken, veal, and eggplant parm; lasagna and baked ziti; baked clams and fried zucchini; of an Italian meal that cost less than $25 a head.
Then real authentic fancy-pants northern Italian food appeared in New York when Lidia and Felix Bastianich opened Felidia in 1981. Ten years ago Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich opened Babbo, and now the city is awash with first-rate expensive Italian restaurants. Don't get me wrong. I love the food at Del Posto, Scarpetta, Alto, Fiamma, and the like, but, oh how I long for the first-rate, authentically Italian, seriously delicious Italian repast that doesn't dent the wallet quite so heavily.
Enter Giancarlo Quadalti. Quadalti, the chef-partner at the fine, unheralded Teodora on East 57th Street, is a well-seasoned, incredibly talented Italian chef (from Emilia Romagna) who wants all of us serious eaters to eat terrific Italian food and not pay through the nose for it. He has done that at Celeste on the Upper West Side, Bianca in the East Village, and now he has even raised his game with Fiore in Williamsburg, which he opened with the equally talented chef-partner Roberto Aita (Roc) in a building that Quadalti lives in, above the restaurant. Fiore might be the best Italian food bargain in town.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, June 17, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Mario Batali's West Village restaurant Babbo just celebrated its tenth anniversary this month. That wasn't my excuse for eating there for the first and second time within the past three months, but I'll pretend it was. (You too can use this excuse to splurge on a dinner there.)
Although I've only eaten at Babbo twice, the combination of both meals (each one involving three companions who like to share—the idea eating situation) has given me a taste of 21 dishes (including two complimentary dishes). That may only be about 30 percent of the whole menu, but it was enough for me to come up with my ideal Babbo meal consisting of an antipasti, primi, and secondi. If you're planning to eat at Babbo for the first time—and if you want an excuse, you can say you're celebrating their 10-year anniversary—but don't have the luxury of eating with a group of people who encourage stabbing their forks into each others dishes, here are my recommendations.
Antipasti
Pig foot "milanese" with rice beans and arugula.
Pig foot "milanese" is the only dish that appeared at both meals. Because after the first meal, I couldn't stop thinking about it (hell, I'm still thinking about it). It just tastes like crispy pork-flavored fat, but the best crispy pork-flavored fat ever. Ever. A thin slab of intensified porkiness. And thank god the portion was so thin; otherwise the richness would've been overpowering. Not that I wouldn't have welcomed it.
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 3, 2008 at 11:00 PM
Dining room and bar of Scarpetta. Photographs by Robyn Lee
Scarpetta
355 West 14th Street, New York NY 10014; (Ninth Avenue; map); 212-691-0555; scarpettanyc.com
Must-Haves: Spaghetti with Tomato and Basil, Polenta, Short Ribs, Capretto
What You'll Spend: $75 for two courses, a cocktail, tax, and tip
Grade: A-
If you follow the bouncing chefs in New York these days, you know that Scott Conant left Alto and L'Impero a year ago to pursue other interests. I've been following Conant's career for ten years now, ever since he cooked at Chianti, where what he calls his modern take on rustic Italian food was first fully realized. After that Conant cooked at City Eatery in 2000, L'Impero in 2002, Bar Tonno in 2004, and Alto in 2005. Got all that? Quiz to follow at the end of the review.
Now Conant has, for the first time, become a chef-restaurateur with the Meatpacking District's Scarpetta, which turns out to be a warm, inviting space with a a modern baseball stadium touch—a retractable roof. The food at Scarpetta is not a radical departure for Conant. In fact, you can call it Conant's Greatest Hits, with a few new tracks thrown in for good measure. Conant's food has always been honest, soulful, and mercifully devoid of gimmickry, and I wanted to see if it could withstand a retractable roof.
The space, formerly Gin Lane, consists of a front bar room with a few tables, and an airy, expansive, back room, where, if you go in good weather, you might see the retractable roof in action.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 10, 2007 at 11:59 AM
I had lunch at Pepolino the other day, and after a very good, very Italian meal I immediately asked myself why I don't eat there more often. Pepolino is the brain child of Patrizio Siddu and Enzo Perrone, two alumni of the famed Florence trattoria Cibreo. The main dining room is a sun-washed, simply decorated room, painted that golden yellow ubiquitous in Italian restaurants in America. Upstairs there is a 50 seat dining room that is good to know about for relatively inexpensive private parties.
Even though it was a gorgeous May day I had the hearty tomato and bread soup and a spinach sformato (savory flan) as starters. The feather-light veal and ricotta meatballs (polpettine) were served with slices of roast potato. Friends had the spaghettini with braised leeks and parmesan cheese and the pappardelle with fresh thyme and tomato. Both were sauced appropriately lightly.
For dessert, the city's best ricotta cheesecake: airy, lemony and just creamy enough. I called it out in my best cheesecake in the city story in the Times a few years ago, and it remains one of Gotham's great taste treats.
When you eat at Pepolino you get fresh, authentically Italian food, made with good ingredients and cooked with care. In short, Pepolino is just what you want in a casual but serious neighborhood Italian restaurant. I wish it was in my neighborhood.
Pepolino
Address: 281 West Broadway, New York, NY 10013 (b/n Lispenard and Canal; map)
Phone: 212-966-9983
Website: pepolino.com
Posted by Ed Levine, January 19, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Some people count sheep when they can't sleep. I count pasta dishes. There's something about a plate of pasta that's incredibly soothing and satisfying at the same time, and soothing and satisfying thoughts are surefire paths to sleep. The other night I couldn't sleep, and I tried to come up with a list of my most satisfying pastas of the last year. I had a good time putting my little list together, so I thought other people would, too. I asked Adam Platt, restaurant critic at New York magazine, Serious Eats community member Sandro, and Johanne Killeen, co-owner of Al Forno in Providence, Rhode Island, and the coauthor (along with her husband and business partner, George Gerrmon) of the new book, On Top of Spaghetti
. Johanne was kind enough to let us post one of the pasta recipes from the book. After the jump, the responses (and the recipe).
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Posted by Ed Levine, October 25, 2006 at 9:39 AM
In Frank Bruni's entertaining and informative piece on the food of Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna in today's Times he mentions gnocco fritto, the addictive little pockets of fried dough served with salami, mortadella, sopressata, prosciutto, or stracchino cheese (or with lardo or culatello in Italy). Have you ever had gnocco fritto?
They're astonishingly good. Gnocco Fritto are one of those Italian dishes that I wish were available everywhere, but the fact of the matter is that gnocco fritto are hard to find in New York.
My favorite gnocco fritto in New York are served at Bianca,5 Bleecker Street (bet.Bowery and Elizabeth Sts.) 212-260-4666. Chef-owner Giancarlo Quaddalti's little fried pillows of dough are crisp, greaseless, and cloud-light. The man knows from gnocco fritto. He is from Emilia-Romagna.
At lunch you can get a mean gnocco fritto sandwich at Via Emilia, 47 E. 21st St. (bet. Park Ave. So. and Broadway), 212-505-3072 . Two slabs of fried dough surround pieces of prosciutto and mozzarella. The gnocco fritto here are not as light and artfully done as the ones at Bianca, but they're mightly tasty, nonetheless.
We need more gnocco fritto served in this country. Now.
Posted by Ed Levine, October 18, 2006 at 9:13 AM
I'm not a tuna salad freak, but I know what I like. I like the tuna salad sandwiches on rye or white toast at Eisenberg's, though I haven't been there since the latest owners took over. Nothing fancy there, just canned Bumble Bee Tuna and Hellman's mayo, mashed together with a big spoon. I like a classic salad nicoise, made with canned tuna (the way Julia Child liked it), but I've never had a tuna salad I craved until I had Giancarlo Quaddalti's tuna, red onion, and bread
salad at Teodora, the best Italian restaurant in New York that no one knows about.
I was reminded of this last night, when I had another quietly perfect meal at Teodora (141 E.57th St. (just west of Lex on the north side of the street). I don't know what it is about the tuna salad that makes it so great. Quaddalti uses Italian tuna, shaved red onion, toasted bread cubes, red wine vinegar, capers, and I don't know what else. I have asked Quaddalti, and he won't give up the recipe. Maybe I'll try again.
It's not a particularly pretty plate of food, with its various shades of dark brown, red, and tan. But it tastes like heaven. It is the tuna salad of my dreams, and maybe of yours as well.
But perhaps there are other great tuna salads out there in the world. I don't know.
Posted by Ed Levine, October 10, 2006 at 6:53 AM
In honor of Columbus Day I started thinking about meatball heroes. A great meatball hero is hard to find. Most meatballs are leaden and way too dense. They're weighed down with too many breadcrumbs. Most hero rolls are cottony disasters, with no chew to the crust. When you find a good meatball hero it's cause for celebration. But when I tried to come up with a top five meatball heroes list I came up short: I could think of three that I truly loved. They are:
Frankie's Spuntino
Address: 457 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (map); 17 Clinton Street, New York, NY 10002 (map)
Phone: 718-403-0033, 212-403-0033
Website: frankiesspuntino.com
The gold standard of meat ball parm heroes. The meatballs are light, the mozzarella is fresh, and the bread is Sullivan Street bakery pizza.
Caputo's
Address: 460 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (map)
Phone: 718-855-8852
A family-run Italian grocery store with very high standards, Caputo's features Mrs. Caputo's surprisingly light meatballs, made with beef, pork, and veal.
Leo's Latticini
Address: 46-02 104th Street, Corona, NY 11368 (map)
Phone: 718-898-6069
Also known as Mama's, Leo's Latticini only has meatballs on certain days of the week. So call first.
Crosby Connection
Address: 290 Elizabeth Street, New York, NY 10012 (map)
Phone: 212-677-8444
Website: crosbyconnectionnyc.com
The crosby special is a meatball hero with ricotta and mozzarella. It's a little messy and I wish the bread were a little better, but overall the Crosby Connection makes a fine meatball hero. The price is right, as well: $6.
In theory, based on their track record, the following places should be prime territory for meatball heroes:
Esposito's
Address: 357 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (map)
Phone: 718-875-6863
The quintessential Brooklyn pork store, Esposito's makes meatballs, fresh mozzarella, has decent bread, and they have pretty high standards.
DiFara
Address: 1424 Avenue J, Brooklyn, NY 11230 (map)
Phone: 718-258-1367
I've never had a meatball parm hero at Dom's, but let's face it, the man knows how to cook and he takes great pride in everything he makes. Anybody had a meatball hero at DiFara?
Meatball Hero Emeritus
Corona Heights Pork Store: The Corona Heights Pork Store is closed (I haven't been able to get in touch with the Cappezzas to find out why), but Mary Lou made a meatball parm hero that was as good as an old school hero could be. Her meatballs were clouds, her sauce was loaded with meaty pork flavor, and she used excellent hero rolls from Rose and Joe's Bakery in Astoria.
I'm also thinking that Faicco's on Bleecker St. and Brooklyn must make a really fine meatball hero, but I've never had one there. Any reports? And what about Royal Crown in Brooklyn?
Posted by Ed Levine, September 26, 2006 at 10:40 AM
I've had two terrific, fairly priced Italian meals in the last two weeks at a restaurant owned by a celebrity chef. Excellent pastas, solicitous service, superb if slightly oversalted skirt steak, extraordinarily delicious pork tenderloin, and killer sorbets and gelato for dessert. Oh yeah, the foccaccia rocks, too.
Now if they would only do something about the piano player. He can play, but he seems like he should be playing at Doubles, or some other bar on the upper east side. But the restaurant is blessedly quiet. You can converse easily with your dining companions.
Pastas are $12-15, main courses are all less than $23. The tasting menu is $41.
I'm not going to tell you the name of the celebrity chef or even the name of the restaurant. This restaurant only takes reservations starting at ten in the morning for the same day, and it hasn't been full either time I've been there.
Call this number, 212-672-0390, listen to the silly music that plays while you wait for someone to answer, eat there, and tell me what you think.
Posted by Ed Levine, September 22, 2006 at 7:43 AM
Yesterday was the Il Buco Pig Roast.
Not only was the pig sensational (served four ways), but the event itself was an incredibly laid back and thoroughly enjoyable experience.
As a friend of mine said, "It feels like we're not even in NYC any more." In fact, it felt like we were upstate on a weekend, a nice feeling to have in the middle of a work day in Gotham.
As good as the pig was, the sheep's milk ricotta and apple fritters were even better. Cloud-like, perfectly fried fritters with a hint of tart (the apples) and tang (the ricotta) drizzled with pomegranate molasses. Delicious!
The four pig dishes served yesterday aren't on the regular menu at Il Buco, but there is a porchetta sandwich that is out of this world that I wrote about in Details Magazine in the September issue.
I asked Il Buco owner Donna Lennard if the celestial fritters were on the restaurant's dessert menu, and she said they had just taken them off.
This comes pretty close to my definition of a dessert tragedy. Please call or e-mail the restaurant (ilbuco@ilbuco.com or 212-533-1932) and ask them nicely to put the fritters back on the menu.
BRING BACK THE IL BUCO RICOTTA AND APPLE FRITTERS!
Posted by Ed Levine, September 20, 2006 at 8:45 AM
When we sat down to eat at Frankies Clinton Spuntino yesterday, we just about had the joint to ourselves.
We ordered, and great comfort food started coming almost immediately. At Frankies they serve absolutely delicious contemporary takes on classic red sauce Italian preparations. The Frankies obviously grew up with this food, and they have made it their business to restore its good name to food lovers in this town. If the run of the mill restaurants in Little Italy and Arthur Avenue actually served food that was anything better than acceptable, it would be the food they serve at Frankies.
We ate:
A delicous tomato, onion and avocado salad.
Two inspired classic sandwiches: grilled sweet faicco's sausage with broccoli rabe and meatball parmigiana, both served on toasted sullivan street bread.
a plate of pork braciole in marinara sauce, the tender pork tasting like Italian barbecue, the red sauce as good a red sauce as I've had in years.
For dessert, a not very sweet Ricotta cheesecake that would have made my cheesecake top ten in my Times article of a few years ago.
So walk, don't run, to Frankies 17 Clinton Spuntino. You'll never set foot in a bad Little Italy restaurant again. I haven't been to Frankies 457 Spuntino on Court Street in Carroll Gardens, but I'll be headed there soon.
Prices are extremely reasonable.
17 Clinton Street: 212-253-2303
Posted by Ed Levine, September 19, 2006 at 6:08 AM
There are obviously way more good neighborhood Italian restaurants than I knew about.
Tim turned me on to Fragole on Court Street in Carroll Gardens.
Benson posted about Locanda Vini e Olii in Clinton Hill, in Brooklyn.
Binky really likes Perrabacco in the East Village.
Moth 23 mentioned Le Zie and Sette in Chelsea and Supper in the East Village.
Keep 'em coming. Write something about the feel of the place and the food when you do. And give us the address and phone number if you have the time. This list will be invaluable to ELE readers.
Posted by Ed Levine, September 18, 2006 at 7:27 AM
A number of ELE users commented, and rightly so, that all the places on my Best Italian restaurant list were all pretty damned pricey. So I thought I should take a stab at a list of potential top five neighborhood Italian restaurants. How do I define a neighborhood Italian restaurant?
A restaurant where you can eat two courses and a glass of wine and spend $25. Neighborhood restaurants that don't require as much of a financial commitment and advance planning. You might wait on line because in many cases these restaurants don't take reservations.
The trouble with most neighborhood Italian restaurants is that most often they serve food that is well-meaning but mediocre at best. That said, there are a number of wonderful neighborhood Italian restaurants sprinkled all over NY. The over-all experience at these neighborhood spots will not likely be as satisfying (service and space can often be lacking), but the food can be delicious.
Here is my list of contenders:
Anthony's: Park Slope
Bianca: Noho
Biricchino: Chelsea
Celeste: Upper West Side
Cono & Sons: Williamsburg
Da Andrea: West Village
Frankies 457 Spuntino: Carroll Gardens
Frankies Clinton St. Spuntino: Lower East Side
Franny's: Park Slope
Gennaro: Upper West Side
Il Bagatto: East Village
Inoteca: Lower East Side
Joe's of Avenue U: Gravesend, Brooklyn
Manducatis: Long Island City
Nick's: Upper East Side
Sapori D'Ischia: Woodside, Queens
Sette Medi: Morningside Heights
Tommaso's: Bensonhurst
Via Emilia: Flatiron District
Have I missed any?
Posted by Ed Levine, September 18, 2006 at 4:08 AM
Gusto
Giorgione
Spigola
Place Nantucket Couple Own
Maremma
Posted by Ed Levine, September 15, 2006 at 7:02 AM
After a couple of days of not so quiet contemplation, as well as some serious Italian restaurant eating, I have decided that Babbo 
is my favorite Italian restaurant in NYC. Why? Because of how I feel when I eat there. Babbo has the greatest vibe and the best energy of any restaurant I know, Italian or not. I feel great as soon as I walk in the door, even when I'm confronted by a crush of people at the bar and on occasion a less than warm and gracious welcome. I feel I'm smack dab in the middle of something both energizing and transportive. I have eaten at Babbo dozens of times, and the food is full of gusto and energy and panache as well. The pastas, the sweetbreads, the skirt steak (is it still on the menu?), the lamb chops, and even the desserts (not normally the strongest suit of an Italian restaurant) are almost always satisfying, earthy, a little bit showy, and extremely delicious. I don't even mind the music, though it can get way too loud late at night, because Mario generally has very good taste in jazz and rock. Though it's never quiet in Babbo, you can almost always carry on a conversation with your tablemates without raising your voice. I have heard people complain about their meal at Babbo (the food and the overall experience), but for my money it defines what contemporary Italian dining is in NYC right now. 110 Waverly Pl. (just east of sixth avenue) 212-777-0303.
My other top four:
Esca fantastic raw seafood creations (called crudo), exemplary pastas (I'm partial to the one with sea urchin and crabmeat), and deceptively simple, fresher than fresh, grilled, sauteed and baked fish main courses. 402 W. 43rd St. (just west of ninth avenue) 212-562-7272.
Teodora: Chef Giancarlo Quaddalti is from Bologna, so when you go to Teodora have the lasagna. It's the real thing. Teodora really feels Italian, from the cooking to the vibe to the Italian being spoken at many tables. 141 E.57th St. (just east of Lexington Ave.) 212-826-7101
Del Posto Inoteca The casual side of Del Posto, the Inoteca's cooking is a little more soulful and significantly cheaper than its big brother. They even have chicken cacciatoria on the menu. Great nibbles, pastas, salads, meat dishes like a pork loin with fig salad, juicy skirt steak, just food you want to eat. They only take reservations there the same day, and when I went the other night, there were a number of empty tables, In other words, you can get in without speed-dialing. 85 Tenth Ave. (between 15th and 16th streets, 212-497-8090)
L'Impero Scott Conant's cabrito (goat) is reason enough to go to L'Impero, and he has a fantastic way with pastas and starters as well. 45 Tudor City Pl., 212-599-5045.
Posted by Ed Levine, September 13, 2006 at 9:10 AM
For more than a century New York has been awash in Italian restaurants, from Barbetta in the theatre district, to Gargiulo's in Coney Island, to Mario's on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx to Parkside in Corona Heights, Queens. And for almost that long New Yorkers have been arguing about which Italian restaurant is the best. Of course chef/restaurateurs like Mario Batali have in the last ten years redefined the New York Italian restaurant (both the food and the experience). In fact people like Batali and his partner Joe Bastianich, Lydia Bastianich (Felidia) and Tony May (San Domenico) have raised the Italian food bar considerably higher.
So I've been thinking a great deal lately about what are the city's top five Italian restaurants, and I've decided that these are the contenders, in alphabetical order:
Al Di La
Babbo
Del Posto
Esca (full disclosure: I've written a cookbook with Esca chef/partner Dave Pasternack)
Felidia
Il Mulino (I've never even had a good meal there, but other people seem to really like it)
L'Impero
Lupa
San Domenico
Scalini Fedeli (also never been, but I've received some good reports)
Teodora
A couple of things I immediately notice when I look at this list. None of the old-fashioned southern Italian-American red sauce joints outside Manhattan even made the list of contenders. That doesn't mean you cannot get a good meal at places like Tommaso's in Brooklyn and Don Peppe in South Ozone Park, Queens, or even Rao's in East Harlem. It's just that the food at those places really doesn't measure up to the places on the list.
Next week I will post about moderately priced Italian restaurants.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 25, 2006 at 3:48 PM
New York Magazine has just published its 101 Best Cheap Eats in NYC. Like NY Mag's Top 101 restaurants, it is a brilliant marketing move by Adam Moss & Co. Full disclosure: I know and like NY Mag cheap eats writers Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld. We frequently chat at parties, but have never broken bread together.
What I love about these kinds of lists are the arguments that inevitably ensue about who was left out and the rankings themselves. The rankings are totally arbitrary and are there solely to spark conversation. What regular folks can quarrel with is what places made the list and what places didn't. And that's where I have quite a few problems with Rob and Robin's list.
For example, how their list could be compiled without either Celeste or Bianca being on it is unfathomable to me. I have eaten at Celeste three times in the last month, and I defy anyone to tell me a better cheap Italian restaurant in NY. Entrees are $13-15 for cryin' out loud, as my dad would have said.
Let's move to Chinese food. Grand Szechuan Eastern is clearly one of the best Sichuan restaurants in this country, and yet it's nowhere to be found on NY Mag's list.
I'll have more to say in other posts, but I love these lists and being able to argue about them.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 18, 2006 at 8:13 AM
My friend Roy took me to the Yankee game last Friday night, and not only are his seats fantastic, fifteen rows back to the right of home plate, but they are fifty feet from the Arthur Avenue and Carl's Cheese Steak concessions. Roy waited twenty minutes between innings for a Carl's Cheesesteak, which turned out to be mighty disappointing. It turns out that for some things good things don't happen to those who wait. The roll was cottony and dry, and the meat was all shriveled and dried up from sitting for too long. Roy said they cook off the meat in advance and then hold it on the griddle for as long as it takes to sell it. This is no way to produce a good cheesesteak.
The Arthur Avenue sandwich, from Mike's Deli, was much better. There was no line, and the prosciutto, mozzarella and roasted peppers sandwich I had on foccacia was pretty damn fine for a ballpark sandwich. The sandwich was pre-made and sitting in a refrigerated case, so it was kind of soggy. But all in all I would certainly order the sandwich again. But the best ballpark sandwich in New York is the Mama's roast turkey, fresh mozzarella and gravy sandwich behind home plate at Shea Stadium.
For that sandwich alone the Mets win the Subway Sandwich series.
Posted by Ed Levine, June 23, 2006 at 7:42 AM
My friend Arthur Schwartz, who knows more than anyone (Italian or American) about Neapolitan food (yes, he did write the book (Naples at Table), will be conducting three free one-hour cooking and eating workshops on July 6, 7 and 8 at the offices of Regione Campania in Manhattan, 4 E. 54th Street (enter through the Kiton store). To register go to Arturo's website, which also currently has a terrific piece on Italian food and ingredients (and a great fava beans and potato recipe) by the Food Maven himself.
Posted by Ed Levine, June 19, 2006 at 12:39 PM
I was at Yankee Stadium last week, and I noticed that there is now an outpost of Mike's Deli. 
the great sandwich and specialty food emporium in the Arthur Avenue retail market. Does this mean that the Yankees and the Mets, who installed a Mama's (Leo's Latticini) sandwich kiosk a couple of years ago, are now engaged in a battle for both sandwich and baseball supremacy. Has anyone had a Mike's sandwich at Yankee Stadium? I've had a Mama's sandwich at Shea, and it was pretty swell to be eating real food at a stadium.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 17, 2006 at 1:30 PM
I started thinking about this last week. Everyone loves the idea of a good, cheap neighborhood Italian restaurant, and we all like to believe we have one in our midst. But most often the neighborhood Italian restaurant we claim as our own really doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Either the ingredients used are sub-standard or the cooking is sloppy or the service is lousy. And just because the owner smiles at you and tries to make you feel at home doesn't make it a good restaurant.
But I do have one on the Upper West Side: Celeste. At Celeste the frying is deftly done, more than creditable Neapolitan pizzas come out of the woodburning oven, pastas are properly al dente and lightly sauced, and salads are made with good ingredients, especially given the modest prices. And they have one of the best Italian cheese courses in the city, thanks to the obsessive cheesemongering of Carmine, one of the owners.
Celeste's executive chef and co-owner Giancarlo Quaddalti also owns another good cheap Italian restaurant, Bianca, in the East Village. There he makes gnocco fritto, impossibly light pieces of fried dough he serves with prosciutto or stracchino cheese, his excellent lasagna, and an assortment of pastas and main courses that more often than not show a high degree of precision and skill.
My third good, cheap Italian restaurant is Franny's in Brooklyn. Husband and wife chef-restaurateur team Andrew Feinberg and Franny Stephens have justifiably become known for the terrific pizzas Feinberg and company turn out from the wood-burning oven, but Feinberg's crostini and salads show a skilled hand and a reverence for quality ingredients you don't often find in restaurants this moderately priced.
What about you? Do you have a good, cheap Italian restaurant in your neighborhood or town or city?
Celeste
Address: 502 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10024 (map)
Phone: 212-874-4559
Bianca
Address: 5 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012 (map)
Phone: 212-260-4666
Franny's
Address: 295 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217 (map)
Phone: 718-230-0221
Website: frannysbrooklyn.com
Posted by Ed Levine, May 11, 2006 at 5:44 PM
My friend John T. Edge was in town last weekend, and after a walking brunch in Chinatown (less than stellar dim sum at Jin Fong, great ribs at Big Wong and exceptional soup dumplings at Goodie's) we wandered into DiPalo Diary to see if Louis DiPalo was around. We walked into the store, and there was Louis behind the counter. Amazingly, there wasn't the usual sea of people crowded into the small space waiting to buy the wonderful array of cheese, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salumi that Louis and his family have been selling for almost a hundred years.
Louis said he was right in the middle of making a batch of mozzarella, and would soon return to take care of John T., who was looking for some Italian cheeses that would travel well enough for him to serve them to his wife for her birthday party in Mississippi. Five minutes later Louis came over to see us, washed his hands, and proceeded to give us a half-hour class on Pecorino Romano cheeses he had on-hand.
I am always transfixed by Louis' mastery of his subjects. His passion is infectious, and his knowledge and experience are equally impressive. Louis' prices are incredibly reasonable. He sells real balsamic vinegar for way less than other shops and on-line sources. He has about ten kinds of Italian canned and jarred tuna on-hand, and he can tell you more than you might want to know about every one of them. Louis is a national treasure, and I urge all of you who can to go down to the store. Call first to make sure Louis is there, and also make sure you are not in a hurry.
When you go to DiPalo's you aren't just shopping for food. You're taking a master class in artisanal Italian food products. DiPalo Dairy is at 200 Grand Street in NYC, ph: 212-226-1033. They will ship and take phone orders. They just don't have an on-line catalogue.
Posted by Ed Levine, May 3, 2006 at 7:28 AM
Meatballs are one of those things you find in virtually every ethnic cuisine. But that just means there are a lot of really bad meatballs to sample in this world. So when you come across a great meatball, you want to tell everyone you know who loves to eat. I had lunch today with Mr. Eater himself, Ben Leventhal, at Gusto on Greenwich Avenue in NYC, a stone's throw from the Village Vanguard, where I spent hundreds of hours in my twenties seeing every great jazz musician I could, from Sonny Rollins to Art Blakey.
Ben ordered the meatballs before I could, so I felt obliged to order something else, the braised chicken with prosciutto. Now the chicken was delicious, don't get me wrong. It was moist and actually tasted like something, with crispy skin and crisped pieces of prosciutto on top.
But the meatballs were transcendent. They were ethereally light and intensely flavored with raisins, pine nuts and a garlicky tomato sauce. Gusto chef Jody Williams might make the best meatballs I have ever tasted. But I haven't tasted them all, so I want to hear from all of you about great meatballs everywhere.
Gusto photo courtesy newyorkmetro
Posted by Ed Levine, May 3, 2006 at 7:27 AM
It was a week of memorable bites:
The prosciutto balls at Joe's Superette on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. There's still very little else on the shelves in the store, but those creamy, tangy, peppery, crunchy prosciutto balls rock. And the best thing: They're 50 cents each. I buy 'em by the dozen. Photo courtesy of iheartbacon
The Kobe Beef appetizer at Morimoto. It's one of the first preparations of Kobe Beef that makes me understand what all the fuss it about, and why it may actually be worth the money. At Morimoto it's carpaccio thin and every little slice is decadently rich, meaty and fatty at the same time. I also have to say that this was the first time I ate in the main dining room at Morimoto, and it was a lot of fun: fun to look at, fun to eat in, and fun to be able to actually talk to my tablemates without screaming. They have these great fiiberglass sheets between the tables that really do soundproof the place.
The cayenne cheese sticks at Murray's Cheese Shop. I have had a ton of cheese sticks in my time, but the Murray's cheesesticks were buttery, tangy and had just the right amount of kick to them.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 20, 2006 at 6:25 PM
A reader requested a pocket guide to eating on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Here goes, and I'm sure I missed a couple of places.
I like Celeste on 84th and Amsterdam for cheap Italian food, the bagels at Absolute Bagels (as you yourself mentioned) at 107th and Broadway, the turkey schwarma at Ali Baba on 85th and Amsterdam, the baked goods (birthday cakes, muffins, danish, assorted cakes and tarts), at Soutine, 70th and Columbus, the Grandma slices at New Pizza Town (78th and Broadway) the roast pork egg foo young (sauce on the side), the ropa vieja, and the fried pork chops at La Caridad (78th and Broadway), Thai food at Land (83rd and Amsterdam), Vietnamese at Saigon Grill (90th and Amsterdam) if you order carefully, the regular slices at T and R (80th and Amsterdam), in general the food at Nice Matin (79th and Amsterdam) at breakfast, lunch and dinner, the cream puffs, the mango ice showers and little chocolate cakes at Beard Papa (76th and Broadway), the burgers and fries at the Fairway Cafe (74th and Broadway), the hot dogs, matzo ball soup on occasion and the pastrami if it's been steaming long enough at Artie's (82nd and Broadway), the consistently delicious food at Ouest (84th and Broadway).
I agree with you wholeheartedly about Onera. It is a damned good restaurant. For Chinese food I go down to the Grand Szechuan International at 50th and Ninth. Hope this helps
Posted by Ed Levine, March 30, 2006 at 12:40 PM
I find most chicken and/or turkey sausage dry and tasteless. So when I discovered DiPaola's Turkey Sausage at my local greenmarket a couple of years ago, I was thrilled. DiPaola is a local poultry farm located in Trenton, NJ. Its sweet turkey sausage actually tastes like good Italian sausage. It has enough fat in it to keep the turkey meat moist and the right amount of fennel seeds. It tastes great formed into turkey sausage patties, crumbled into pasta sauces (I just brown the sausage and throw it into some Patsy's Marinara Sauce), or served alongside a couple of softly scrambled eggs in the morning.
DiPaola Turkeys, Trenton, NJ Ph: 609-587-9311
At 16 New York greenmarkets, including Union Square on Wednesdays and Fridays; Grand Army Plaza, Fort Greene, Borough Hall and Cortelyou in Brooklyn on Saturdays; Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on Wednesdays; West 97th Street on Fridays; St. George and Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island, on Saturdays; Columbia University on Sundays.
Posted by Ed Levine, March 30, 2006 at 12:40 PM
There are a few ingredients every great pizza needs, and I don't mean cheese, sauce and dough. Last night I went to Pala, a new Roman-style pizzeria just south of Houston Street at the northern tip of the Lower East Side. I was a few minutes early so I chatted with an Italian gentleman who I deduced to be the owner. He told me that he uses a brick-lined electric oven that can get up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, a combination of Italian fresh mozzarella and a good local cow's milk mozzarella purveyor, DiPalo Dairy, high-quality LaValle (sp?) canned tomatoes, and twelve kinds of flour in his dough, including King Arthur and Giusti, a California-based organic flour purveyor. So why was his pizza so bland and flat-tasting? Well, first and foremost because it lacked salt. And beyond that, it was missing the most important ingredients of all, heart, soul and love. Either nobody in the joint either knew what great pizza tastes like, or nobody cared enough to do what it takes to make great pizza. Pala coulda been a contender. At this point it's clearly a wannabe.
Posted by Ed Levine, February 7, 2006 at 1:13 PM
I always like to compare at least two reliable and credible sources when I am about to go somewhere, so in that spirit here is Faith Willinger's take on Venetian food. Faith is a food writer and cookbook author who has lived in Italy for many years now, and I have found her to be fairly reliable. She can (like all of us) get a little too chummy with some of the people she writes about, but she certainly knows Italian food inside and out, especially northern Italian food (she lives in Florence). Her book Eating in Italy: A Traveler's Guide to the Hidden Gastronomic Pleasures of Northern Italy
(1998) is worth seeking out, as is Fred Plotkin's Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, Revised
. Both books are dated but still useful. When you add all of this info up we may be, in my son's words, getting into 511 (too much information) territory, but I'd rather err on the side of too much info rather than too little.
Posted by Ed Levine, December 14, 2005 at 1:30 PM
When you're a food critic on a diet you're subject to more temptations than one could possibly imagine. Add those temptations to the array of holiday gatherings and the food that accompanies them, and you have a recipe for diet 911.
Last Saturday was a perfect example. I ate lunch with my brother and his wife at the tiny but wonderful pan-Mediterranean bistro August, on Bleecker Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. My brother had a German pancake stuffed with caramelized quince and topped with powder sugar. Delicious! My sister-in-law had a frittata topped with skordalia, the Greek potato and garlic puree. Virtuous me opted for the Greek yogurt parfait topped by cherries soaked in Burgundy. One diet disaster averted, three to go.
We went early to a dinner thrown for our artist friend Mike Sells, whose thought-provoking and disturbing exhibit just went up at the Jason McCoy Gallery at 57th Street and Madison Avenue. There were lots of great-looking cheeses on hand, but I managed to stay an hour and just have one pretzel.
Dinner was with old and dear friends at a Tuscan restaurant, Beppe. The food was a little disappointing there (I have had many wonderful meals there in the past), but as I know the owners, they sent out every dessert they serve to our table. I tried to take one spoonful of each (panna cotta, warm chocolate cake, pineapple upside-down cake, homemade s'more, a cheesecake, and an assortment of ice creams), and for the most part I succeeded.
After dinner everyone else at my table went home, but I went to a party for some friends of ours, Kathryn Kellinger, a food writer, and Lee Hanson, her chef husband. Their table was full of roast baby suckling pig (one of Lee's favorite recipes) and various and assorted cookies (Kathryn loves to bake). Once again I managed to resist.
These are certainly not going to be the last temptations I am confronted by as I try to lose 40 pounds, but I figure it's a pretty good sign that I managed to resist most of the goodies put before me.
Posted by Ed Levine, December 5, 2005 at 1:31 PM
I have now walked past my wife's scrumptious lemon-glazed pound cake ten times in the last eight hours, and so far I have been able to resist its siren call.
The cake was left over from our dinner party last night, which severely tested my diet discipline. I made two recipes from Mario Batali's excellent new book, Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes to Cook at Home
, and both were huge hits with the crowd we had assembled. The Winter Caprese salad, slow-roasted (for two hours) Roma tomatoes, Buffalo-milk mozzarella, toasted pine nuts, a dab of pesto, and a basil leaf, was a fine starter. I was amazed that the totally cardboardy winter Roma tomatoes were transformed by the slow-roasting.
The main course was a braised (in red wine and tomato sauce) pork butt that had been browned in a paste of garlic, pancetta and Italian parsley. The 7 1/2 hunk of pork cooked on the stove for four hours, so by the time we served it, it was as tender and flavorful as the best barbecue.
In fact, I decided it WAS Italian barbecue.
The pork was accompanied by a celery root puree my wife made from a Bass Serena cookbook, Serena, Food & Stories: Feeding Friends Every Hour of the Day
.
I tried to watch my caloric intake by not having seconds and eating very little of the cheese and bread we served beforehand. I also made sure to eat a couple of pears and an apple in the course of the day, which was mostly spent shopping and cooking. I also had a bowl of cereal for breakfast and two pieces of whole-grain bread and a piece of American cheese (Deluxe, not the cheese food crap) for lunch, so I wouldn't be starving when our guests showed up around seven.
I had lost five pounds going into the dinner, and I will get on the scale Wednesday to see if I can maintain my weight loss momentum. Oh, yeah I broke down and had a couple of bites of the lemon pound cake tonight.
