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a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.View my photography website.
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Tag Archives: Italian food
Amalfi Coast: Dining & Drinking Guide
Long before farm-to-table dining was all the rage in the U.S., this verdant peninsula on the western coast of Italy was home to some of the finest, freshest cuisine anywhere. The fruits and vegetables grown right on the Amalfi Coast – terraced gardens of olives, lettuces, tomatoes and lemon trees, all whizzing by as you take the Circumvesuviana train down south – make a startling difference on the plate. Over the course of seven days this May, we sampled some of the best the Amalfi Coast has to offer. (more…)
Boulud Sud
The opening of a new Daniel Boulud restaurant is reason enough for a downtowner to head uptown, but there are two things about his new Boulud Sud that make it particularly exciting. When most American restaurants take on the genre of Mediterranean food, they stick to the usual suspects: Italy, Spain, France and Greece. But one of the first words on Boulud Sud’s menu is “harissa,” and the African and Middle Eastern influences take off from there.
This is a welcome change, because our American idea of what constitutes Mediterranean fare is behind the times. Despite New York chefs’ emphasis on food like one’s nonna would have made it, many restaurants in France and Italy have changed radically since the ’50s, with many more African and Middle Eastern techniques and ingredients making their way onto menus. (more…)
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Tagged African food, bars, French food, Italian food, Middle Eastern food, New York, restaurants, vegetarian food
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Rubirosa
Formerly the street of forgotten red sauce joints and San Gennaro tourists, Mulberry Street in Little Italy was recently declared “the city’s hottest new restaurant row” by the New York Post. This surprising renaissance began after local diners had pretty much abandoned it, then Torrisi Italian Specialties sprang up out of the ashes. The lines outside there continue to grow (even at lunch), and underground drinking den the Mulberry Project adds even more caché to the street. Rubirosa fills in the last piece of the puzzle, the Italian pizza spot. (more…)
Zero Otto Nove, Arthur Avenue
Whenever a media outlet anoints a place “the best new U.S. pizzeria,” as Bloomberg.com did with Zero Otto Nove in 2008, the debate begins. Pizza aficionados descend to check it out, analyzing the pies according to precise calibrations like sauce-to-crust ratio and “tip sag,” Slice’s measurement of crispness. Is this pizza really the best? Inevitably the pizza shop will be compared to the legendary Una Pizza Napoletana.
Now that Zero Otto Nove is opening a branch in Manhattan in about two months, the stakes are even higher. But the Arthur Avenue original is no pizza joint. It’s first and foremost a restaurant, brought to us by Roberto Paciullo of Roberto’s around the corner. The center of attention may be the huge wood burning oven in the center of the room, but don’t let that distract you from everything else going on here. (more…)
The Babbo Cookbook: Oxtail Ragu
I must have bought The Babbo Cookbook as soon as it came out nine years ago, but it included so many recipes that were nearly impossible to make until now. Remember when guanciale wasn’t exactly a household word? Oft-mentioned ingredients like boar sausage, beef cheeks and calf’s brains may still not be available at your local Gristede’s, but now Eataly’s butcher counter sells oxtail meat. (more…)
Torrisi Italian Specialties
It sounds like a scenario out of a magazine quiz: “Are You Really a New Yorker?” Would you be willing to wait in line in the bitter cold and pay $50 per person for a candlelit meal in… a deli? The answer should be yes, not because everybody else is doing it, but because the re-envisioned Little Italy fare at Torrisi Italian Specialties is too good to be a passing fad. (more…)
Ciano
Shea Gallante is perhaps best known as the former chef of Cru, the now-shuttered restaurant with a hefty tome of a wine list and prices that went into the thousands. The only thing more starched and staid that the atmosphere was the clientele, consisting mostly of older men murmuring reverentially over their wine. If you paid attention, you could hear a bleating side-note: the food was quite good. But it almost seemed inappropriate to mention the fare, as long as it went with that Bordeaux.
Mirroring the trajectory of the New York dining scene, Gallante decamped from Cru after the crash to open a new, more casual place. Italian, of course. If the sky were raining hellfire, New Yorkers would immediately head to the nearest homey Italian restaurant for comfort food. But don’t expect to find a cozy afterthought of a meal at Ciano. (more…)
Eataly: A Strategy
If agoraphobia is a fear of crowds, and claustrophobia is a fear of being trapped small places, then what is that particularly New York fear of being trapped in a mob of people, as at Macy’s at Christmastime? Whatever the name, this is exactly the emotion that Eataly elicited during the first few months of its opening, widely touted not just in New York but apparently in every tourist brochure.
If you could make your way through the door when Eataly opened this fall, you would be caught up in a mob of Italian food enthusiasts, swept past a Lavazza espresso station, past aisles of cheeses, olive oil, chocolate and dried pasta, and deposited somewhere in the vortex of this new mega food court by chefs and television stars Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich. The line just to put down your name for a table took 10 minutes the first time we visited – the wait for an actual table was two hours. The four casual restaurants – La Pizza, La Pasta, Il Pesce and Le Verdure – looked promising, but when they’re oversubscribed to this extent, we had to say “basta!” and head out the door. (more…)
Osteria Morini
When chef Michael White said to the New York Times this past August that “if his surname had been Italian, the city’s food establishment would have rallied around him sooner,” he had a point. Names like “Batali” or “Donatella” inspire hoards to flock to their restaurants for Italian food, whereas “Michael White” sounds like an off-key version of “Marco Pierre White” of English fame.
So if you did actually discover the ethereal, exquisite pasta at Michael White’s Alto, you felt as if you’d been let in on a wonderful secret. The city’s best pasta was not at a rustic rock and roll townhouse downtown but surprisingly in the center of Midtown, with a sleek backdrop of blue-lit walls and wine bottles. Go to any serious restaurant in Italy and you will find that they aspire to the same level of excellence and haute cuisine. When there’s a particularly deft hand like White’s involved in the pasta, you can taste the magic at the first bite. (more…)
Vapiano
This first branch of this rapidly-expanding Italian “fast casual” chain in New York, Vapiano fills a void left by Dean & DeLuca when that panini and coffee shop closed just a couple blocks down on University Place, and it will probably become to the neighborhood what Dean & DeLuca was: a go-to place for a simple lunch or dinner. What will keep it from closing like Dean & DeLuca did? Vapiano has a liquor license, a spacious bar and a knack for marketing.
The light-filled interior, with soaring ceilings and sleek Italian design throughout, sets the stage for what’s actually a very back-to-basics dining experience, though at first glance it seems high tech. After picking up a key card at the door, you take a tray and collect your meal yourself, selecting panini, salads, pizza and pasta from various food stations, where they prepare each dish in front of you and scan the card. If your college dining hall went gourmet, this is what it would be like. (more…)
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