Nearing the Wine Century at Lupa

Last Tuesday was the designated Fancy Meal Night during my dad's vacation. To nobody's surprise, I was given free rein to pick the restaurant and precious few instructions beyond "Tuesday." After a quick perusal of OpenTable, I hit upon an odd but somehow spot-on choice: Lupa.

Yes, Lupa is highly acclaimed and known as one of Mario Batali's best, but for some reason I'd never been there. So on a slightly chilly and blustery Tuesday evening, I met Dad at the Spring Street subway stop and we headed to Lupa.

It's a cute little place, charmingly rustic and highly crowded, with throngs of after-workers crowding the front bar. If you mind being packed in next to your fellow diners, don't go here. But if you can get past that, you'll likely have a surprisingly enjoyable-- and surprisingly reasonable, given what it is-- meal.

Our server, it's worth noting, was incredibly friendly and accommodating, even getting into the spirit when I presented her with my Wine Century Club challenge. See, at that point I was 97 wines in, and given my limited knowledge of Italian wines, I basically posed the challenge for her to find some varietals I hadn't tried within their by-the-glass menu. Magic: a glass of Frascati Superiore (white) and a red with nebbiolo, and I was magically at the 99 wine threshold. (Stay tuned...)

98...

99...

What better to sop up all that wine than their focaccia, eh? Two conjoined pieces of pillowy, oil-soaked bread, spotted with rosemary on the crust. This fairly begged for a sprinkling of coarse salt to bring out the flavors, but even without it, it was some gooooood carbin'.

Mmmhmmm.

To start, Dad had the misticanza salad, which he prounced good for what it was, a mix of slightly bitter upscale lettuces and some fennel to round out the mix.

I'm clearly still getting used to this camera

I chose the broccoli rabe with ricotta verdure, an ample tangle of the veggie slicked with creamy ricotta. Surprisingly, the overwhelming flavor of this dish was lemon: there were bits of lemon rind hidden in the mixture, and it gave an otherwise potentially heavy dish a truly light flavor. I wish there had been some more punch in the ricotta (perhaps a bit of ricotta salata thrown in?), but overall, this was quite enjoyable.

Quite pretty, actually

And then the mains. Dad went for a daily special, pappardelle with pork ragu. In typical Italian fashion, it was a small portion, but Dad raved about the taste and quality.

Homely but tasty

My choice was the escarole, walnut, red onion, and pecorino salad, sans red onion. This turned out to be a light and almost refreshing salad, with the bed of shaved pecorino adding a salty bite to the crunchy greens.

Lots of shades of white

And all this, of course, was a mere prelude to dessert. Though there are choices on the dessert menu, look around the dining room and you'll see nearly every table chooses one thing only: the signature Lupa tartufo. It looks innocent enough, but it packs a true wallop. A thick, yielding chocolate shell-- not shatter-hard but almost the texture of milk chocolate-- gives way to pure, intense hazelnut gelato. A shower of hazelnuts crowns the orb, and the baseball-sized confection sits in a pool of hazelnut-studded chocolate sauce. Push through to the center of the tartufo and you'll find a brandied cherry amid a protective case of what seems like chocolate cake (or maybe a bit of brownie?). No matter-- it all disappears in the work of a couple bites.

Oh. Yum.

Lupa was a pleasant surprise. The prices are reasonable, the service friendly and laid-back, and the food (ahem, dessert, ahem) worth returning for. It's the perfect place for a classy meal when you don't feel like going through the classy-meal rigamarole. Go. You'll enjoy it. And isn't that what it's all about?

Lupa
170 Thompson Street, near W. Houston
212-982-5089

Pre-Thanksgiving food and family at Il Casale

Last week, after taking the trusty Amtrak back home to Massachusetts, I joined my parents, the bro, and our cousins at Il Casale in Belmont for our annual pre-Thanksgiving dinner. Il Casale is the newest suburban outpost of chef Dante de Magistris, who owns well-respected restaurants in Cambridge and Boston. We entered the warm, classically rustic Italian dining room with high hopes.

Our experience was a bit mixed, although I tend to cut a restaurant some slack when presenting a large party (in this case, eight people). So first, the highlights: We started with some wine, a bottle of falanghina for the ladies and a bottle of chianti for the men (yes, it just coincidentally split that way. We all cringed a little too). To go with the wine was some peasant bread; rip off a chunk, slide it through some olive oil on your plate, and take a sip of wine. Ready to roll.

Bread? Check. Bottle? Check.

Before deciding on entrees, we ordered a variety of sfizi for the table. The plates were small and not inexpensive, but down to the plate they were incredibly high quality and flavorful. Special accolades are awarded to the burrata, a small, sunken hemisphere that looked something like panna cotta but tasted like pure cream, surprisingly enlivened by the candied pistachios on top.

Arancini, perfectly poppable

A duo of classic meatballs

The pate. We had one pate fan at the table... she got most of this.

Scampi-- shrimp and aioli and Boston lettuce

Cauliflower with some cheese and Caesar dressing

Beautiful, beautiful burrata

Then, the entrees. There were some successes here, too-- radiatore with tuna in a tomato sauce was praised, as was the daily special, radiatore with halibut (?). Dad and the bro enjoyed the veal saltimbocca, although the bro did admit he wished there were twice as much on the plate.

Radiatore with tuna and tomato

Special pasta with halibut

Saltimbocca

A side of garlicky spinach

But there were some misses, as well. My cousin HB's meal never arrived; his order apparently got lost in translation, either on the way to or in the kitchen. And my choice, a grilled pear salad with cheese instead of the prociutto, sported an unmistakably assertive porky flavor despite avowals that the dish was vegetarian. To our server's credit, she graciously swapped the salad for an arugula, fresh fig, pecorino, and balsamic concoction that was incredibly delicious. Once my second salad was on the table and HB's pasta had arrived, everyone was most certainly content.

The prosciutto version of the pear salad

My salad, 1.0

My salad, 2.0.

We had some serious dessert plans up our sleeves, so we passed on the dessert menu, paid the sizeable check, and moved on to the sweet portion of our night. Il Casale is definitely a high-quality restaurant, and it's an immensely enjoyable place to spend an evening. It's not cheap (nope, not cheap at all), and while our meal wasn't flawless, ultimately everything was quite tasty and clearly made with care. Had everything gone as planned, Il Casale would have been a four Offset Spatula shoo-in; as it is, it gets a solid three OSes with high potential to return.

Il Casale
50 Leonard Street, Belmont, MA
617-209-4942

LWF&D goes to St. Maarten, part II

So, I'm back in NYC, already missing the sunshine and sea. What better excuse to write a bit more on my travels to a tropical paradise last week?

Although St. Maarten/St. Martin is known for its food, I actually had mixed experiences with the restaurants there. As I wrote previously, Cafe de Paris and Serafina's were both delicious. One night I visited a restaurant (that will remain unnamed) that was highly acclaimed but only turned out to be "meh"; afterwards, however, I visited Carousel for some gelato, and THAT was delicious. Behold, my Rocher flavor, which tasted just like the hazelnut candy and had shards of crunchy wafer embedded within.

Just like in Italy

The next night I dined at Spiga, an Italian restaurant in Grand Case. This was the best restaurant of my trip, and as a spoiler I actually returned my final night on the island for a second go. The chef is Italian, his wife is the hostess, and the waitstaff is incredibly welcoming. I dined on the porch, absorbing the warm breezes and the amusing banter of a retiree couple seated at a table near me.

For my meal, I chose the "Caprese" appetizer, which was listed simply as "mozzarella, tomatoes, avocado, olives, capers, basil oil, and eggplant terrine, grape tomatoes, arugula, parmigiano." I was envisioning some sort of stacked dish, but what greeted me was much different, and much more creative.

So much variety

It turned out to be something like a tasting plate. There were two rounds of tomato, crowned with milky fresh mozzarella, pesto, capers, and olives. There was a fanned-out quarter of an avocado. A few fronds of arugula lay under a shower of shaved parmesan. And in the top-right corner was the eggplant terrine, which was an unattractive gray color but had an intriguing flavor that grew on me. The whole thing was fresh and tasty and very Italian.

And then there was dessert (of course!). I chose the "Chocolate" option: warm chocolate hazelnut cake, honey-vanilla gelato, and caramel sauce. It was a decadent, moist brownie-like chocolate cake, which was delicious (although to be honest I don't really remember much hazelnut flavor). The ice cream was cool and creamy and copious, all great things. And there was an interesting sesame tuile to crown things off. If you're craving chocolate cake with sweet vanilla ice cream, it was pretty much near perfect.

Decadence embodied

And so there you have it-- the food highlights of my vacation. Now it's off to Chicago for a conference, where perhaps I'll find a few more food highlights of a different sort...

Spiga
Esperance Road, Grand Case, St. Martin

Carousel
Welfare Road, Simpson Bay, St. Maarten

Scarpetta is not "parfait"

Last week, Mom and I ventured into the Meatpacking District for Sunday dinner. Our destination? Scarpetta, a place I'd been longing to visit for a while ever since I had heard about their vegetarian menu. We walked in, right on time for our early reservation, and were told to wait in the vestibule for a few moments by the hostess, who was clearly nonplussed about her job. Soon, we were led into the dining room, classy and understated and mercifully blessed with natural light pouring through the (literal) glass ceiling.

Our meal was marked by ups and downs. Our server seemed awkward and uncomfortable; ordering a glass of wine was a trial, and his recommendations (both for and against certain wines) were almost aggressive in tone. After a couple of false starts, I settled on a glass of Ribolla "Rubikon," a white that was innocuous enough.

Vino, barely white

The bread course was a highlight. Several different types of carbs, from sliced white bread to different types of focaccia to stromboli packed with salami and smoked mozzarella, made a feast fit for a king, and the three accompaniments-- mascarpone butter, a sundried tomato spread, and a spiced olive oil-- were divine (particularly the light, addictive mascarpone butter).

Mmmm bread

I had ordered one veggie appetizer as my entree and one veggie app to share with my mom as a side dish. I requested that they all be brought to the table together; our server said one should be brought first. He said, "I'd like to start you with something because the fish [my mom's selection] will take a while." I said, "don't worry about it" and figured he'd fire everything at once as we had agreed. Wrong! Before my glass of wine had even made it to the table, our shared dish of roasted mushrooms with porcini puree and fingerling potatoes was before us. Because the server's always right, right? Yeahhh. I ate some of the mushrooms; my mom held off until he entree arrived and was thus treated to a cold version of what was otherwise a very tasty dish. The mushrooms themselves were well-seasoned and delightful; the puree was savory and addictive; and the little potato coins were a nice bit of starch to round things out.

Better hot than cold

As the mushrooms sat there half-eaten, our entrees made their way to the table. Mom had chosen the black cod with caramelized fennel and concentrated tomatoes. The portion was on the small side, but Mom really enjoyed it, especially complimenting how well cooked it was.

Lots of orange

My entree was the heirloom tomatoes with marinated eggplant and baby greens. This was a curious dish; it was larger than I had expected, which was a plus, and it was filled with large chunks of tomatoes. Initially I had trouble finding the eggplant, until I realized that there were tiny ribbons of acidic, almost pickled eggplant buried in the mix. Quite curious. It's not a dish I would return for, but it was certainly creative and flavorful.

Last gasp of summer

We were both looking forward to dessert. Mom ordered the chocolate cake, sans espresso sauce; I convinced her to keep the burnt orange-caramel gelato on the plate, and the kitchen added a smear of caramel sauce to round out the mix. I can confidently say based on my tiny taste that this is one of the better molten chocolate cakes I've ever encountered. The cake was the right balance of cakey and fudgy, and the taste was just a bit extra-chocolatey with none of the burnt edge that some chocolate cakes can court. The gelato was also surprisingly good, a nice cool counterpoint to the warm cake.

Almost art deco

I had been choosing between the olive oil cake (concord grape sorbet and pears) and the chocolate & vanilla parfait (hazelnut milkshake and biscotti). I ultimately went with the parfait, and I can confidently say that I tweaked. Sadly, this was one of the worst desserts I've had in a while. The main dessert was a cup of layered mousse/pudding strata, milk and dark chocolate sandwiching vanilla. Texturally, all were fine, but taste-- where was the sweetness? I like desserts because I have a serious sweet tooth, and especially after dinner I crave something sugary to round out the meal. Those who really don't like sweet stuff might find this dessert alluring, but I found the whole thing flat and bland and not nearly sweet enough. Plus, the parfait included a layer of coffee gelee and a crown of coffee granita on top, both of which were powerfully bitter and overpowered the retiring chocolate and vanilla flavors. The whole thing ended up tasting mostly of coffee, a dessert flavor of which I'm not very fond. Had the menu mentioned coffee at all, I would have skipped this dessert entirely. The hazelnut milkshake was a shot of milk lightly flavored with hazelnut; the biscotti were just as you'd expect (dry, crumbly cookies). A bite of biscotto dipped in the milkshake was by far and away better than a bite of the parfait.

Makes me sad to look at

So I'll admit, I left Scarpetta somewhat disappointed. Service overall ranged from mildly unfriendly to stilted and awkward to unpleasant. Food had its ups-- the bread, the mushrooms-- and its low, low downs-- the parfait. And, of course, it's not at all cheap. Our meal (two apps, one entree, two desserts, one glass of wine) came out to around $100. Based on value for money and overall quality of experience, I can't wholeheartedly recommend Scarpetta. As a result, it earns a disappointing two Offset Spatulas and a slow, sad shake of my head.

Scarpetta
355 W. 14th Street, at 9th Avenue
212-691-0555

Eataly is insane

To celebrate his last weekend in town before moving to the West Coast, BL and I checked out Eataly for a Saturday evening meal. And let me tell you this: it is INSANE. Don't go there if you're looking for a relaxing meal, or a relaxing... anything. I honestly think it would be the coolest place on earth if the rest of earth's humanity weren't there with you at the same time; currently, it's just too freakin' crowded to be a fun place to be.

For the uninitiated, basically Eataly is like a huge Italian market. There are areas to buy produce, cheese, pasta, bread, imported Italian products, fish, charcuterie, wine, etc. etc. etc. for ever and ever Amen. Some pictures of the madness are below:

The first stall as you enter: heirloom tomatoes

Fruit. Prices are comparable to Whole Foods

There are big gathering areas with high tables where people are eating cheese and drinking wine. In general, most people are wandering around the market with a beer or glass of wine in their hands-- very Italian

The pastry case, already somewhat picked over before our dinner

BL and I wanted dinner, so I waited in an interminable line and was lucky enough (dodging a 45-minute wait) to snag seats in their Verdure restaurant. By restaurant I really mean "area of tables in the middle of the floor"; you're not really shielded from the other shoppers, who are rushing past you pushing their futuristic plastic baskets. Rather, you're kind of sitting there, eatin' some food, in the middle of the loud, frenzied morass of humanity.

Anyway, the service is friendly and relatively prompt. Verdure, not surprisingly, focuses on vegetables, so we ordered some vegetable dishes. BL went with the pesto lasagna, which was pretty rich and delightful, and the bruschetta, which was "some of the best he's ever had." I stole bites of each, and I verify that the tomato-basil bruschetta was actually pretty stellar.

Pretty, and hearty, and cheesy

The bruschetta of the day-- fresh and vibrant and not too oily

My choice was slightly less successful: the pinzimonio citronette, basically shaved raw vegetables covered in an oily lemon vinaigrette. It was crunchy. And bland. And a pitifully small portion for $11. I left almost hungrier than I had been when I'd arrived, if that's even possible.

My sad concoction

Oh, and there's bread, but no olive oil or salt. Ah-kay.

Straight-up, slightly-stale-around-the-edges carbs

We paid and headed through the throngs to check out the dessert offerings. The pastry case had been pretty much cleared out, so we figured we'd have better luck at the gelato bar. Not really. All the good flavors were gone; I tried a taste of the fior de latte, the apricot, and the fig. All were "meh." Disappointed, we left the market to seek our fortunes (desserts) elsewhere.

All in all, Eataly is simply overwhelming. Everything is larger than life, including Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich, both of whom were roaming the market, snapping photos, and investigating the goings-on while BL and I were there (which is impressive. Glad to see they're on the ground). I wouldn't necessarily recommend the meal we had there; it was overpriced and not especially relaxing. But I would recommend that you stop in at Eataly just to have the experience. Perhaps go at an off-time if you can to try to dodge the crowds, pick up some reasonably-priced produce and cheese, and have a picnic in Madison Park. Now THAT would be a good idea.
(for Eataly in general)
Eataly
200 Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street
646-398-5100