Roman Style
June 2, 2009
- Cuisine: Roman-style
- Vibe: '20s trattoria
- Occasion: Group dinner, casual date, long lunch
- Don't Miss: Grilled lamb Scottadito
- Price: Appetizers $10, entrées $18, dessert $6
- Reservations: Recommended
- Phone: (212) 966-1234
- Location: 231 Mott St., near Prince St.
Over the past few months, five Roman-style restaurants have opened in Manhattan. What is it about Roman cooking? For starters, it's simple and cheap. And right now, simple and cheap is a very good thing.
Roma means carciofi alla giuda (Jewish-style fried artichokes), fried asparagus, fried zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies. Rome means salads made with fresh fava beans, chickpeas, anchovies and mint. And Pecorino Romano, a salty, aged sheep's milk cheese. Rome is also famous for pizza with wafer-thin crust topped with mozzarella, tomato, capers and anchovies. If you don't know what a Roman pie tastes like, visit Emporio, a trattoria that opened in Nolita six weeks ago.
The pie crusts at Emporio are so terrifically crunchy and thin, they're more like Frisbee-size crackers. The best pizzaiolas - the guys making the pies - are true chefs.
Chef Riccardo Buitoni has two popular restaurants in New York - Aurora SoHo and Aurora Brooklyn. This time, he wanted to try Rome and pizza. As it happens, Roman-style pizza is his forte. He tops his pies with everything from house-cured pancetta, red onion, rosemary and potato to eggplant, pesto, San Marzano tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.
My favorite is a warm Frisbee cracker topped with super-smoky guanciale, kale and Pecorino cream. Buitoni cures the guanciale himself. As for the Pecorino cream, he melts two kinds of Pecorino into milk and the result is outstanding. Really, some of the best dishes come from the wood-burning oven, including the porchetta, made with pork from Flying Pigs Farm and a dessert calzone filled with Nutella, ricotta and walnuts.
Emporio is pretty Roman. You won't find generic Italian dishes of the Caprese salad or penne pomodoro sorts. "When in Rome" is a cliché for good reason. It's a fine credo for dining out.
When at Emporio, get the lamb scottadito. In Italian, scottadito translates to "burn your finger," meaning use your hands and gnaw the meat off the bone. Order the Stracchino cheese - a wonderfully creamy cheese from Milan - with sweet, roasted cherry tomatoes and drizzled with vincotto. Also order the fried artichokes seasoned with sea salt and lemon.
For dessert, I liked the sheep's milk ricotta tart with a rustic spelt tart and Marsala-spiked sabayon.
Not everything works at Emporio. Especially the Frascati-braised rabbit, which was Frascati-soaked and unusually fatty. Then there was the tonnarelli cacio e pepe (Pecorino cheese & black pepper sauce).
Everyone at my table was convinced someone had knocked a glass of water into our bowl in the kitchen. I'm not pointing any fingers, but the chef did mention a splash of cooking water from the pasta.
The black kale and grilled mushroom salad would have been great had it not been so aggressively dressed in egg yolk, Dijon mustard and Parmesan.
The atmosphere at Emporio is laidback - salvaged wood benches, white subway tile walls, ripped brown paper place mats and tin bread buckets. Yet, Buitoni seems dedicated to organic ingredients and thoughtful cooking.
He's also a surprisingly talented pizzaiola, which makes Emporio a pizzeria with a lot of other good food on the menu.
