For The Land And Sea Faring

Wednesday night found me at Torrisi Italian Specialties, finally, over a year after the buzz-y place opened.  Reservations are now accepted, which meant getting through the hallowed doors is easier, though I got mine--an unfathomably early 5:30--on OpenTable.  The dining room is small and meant to resemble an old Italian home, I think, with lace drawn curtains and old, mismatched plates in varying patterns that could have appeared at my grandmother's dinner table had my grandmother been inspired by things less Liberace and more Fred Astaire.  The menu is fixed, with a series of snacks leading into a pasta course, a meat course, and a cookie course.  The night we were there, and additional dessert special ran for $10.  We had to order it.

Mozzarella, house-made.  A perfect pillow glazed with olive oil and accompanied by two crusty heels of garlic bread.  Then an oil confit of mackerel, hot and cold, savory and sweet.  Sweetbreads came grilled, in my favorite incarnation, over giardinera, Italian pickles.  The acid cut perfectly through the fat of the veal.  Our last snack course: tender fermented broccoli rabe in a feather light robe of tempura batter, bitterness be damned.

Pasta was a clever take on pasta e fagiole.  A fresh linguine in broth arrived with cannellini beans, pork belly, ham oil, and kale.  I could have eaten three more bowls.  Ditto for my fish, breed unknown, which came swimming in a tomato broth with unshelled mussels.  Duck was sliced very thick and cooked skin on and though it and it's accompanying tender were perfect, the hearts were slightly overcooked.  I overlooked the detail because the coconut almond tart, topped with meringue and reminiscent of the best Almond Joy I ever had in childhood made up for any of the meal's indiscretions.  So, too, did a cookie plate of a tiny cannoli that did not betray its ricotta, a rainbow cookie, and a few other perfect confections.

The next afternoon, it was on to lunch at glossy Oceana, where I sat at the bar with a bottle of Aligote and enjoyed a decent lunch.  A beet salad was woefully undercooked ("I like my beets with texture," my companion said, but this was a technical error).  Even though I don't like beets, I appreciated the combination of orange supremes and beet wedges on the plate.  Hiramasa tartare, with just a hint of hot pepper and cubes of pear, was more successful--a clean, well-executed dish that I would eat again.

My soft shell crab entree was fine.  Just fine.  The crust didn't stick quite right and the pineapple salsa didn't have enough creaminess to adhere to the crab.  A side of ramps were cut so small as not to resemble ramps at all.  Alas.  A final plate of cookies satisfied my sweet tooth--the standouts were a coconut macaron sandwich stuffed with chocolate and a soft iced lemon cookie.  Good for lunch, but no brain busters here.

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Torrisi Italian Specialties
250 Mulberry Street
New York, NY 10012
212.965.0955

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Oceana
120 W. 49th Street
New York, NY 10020
212.759.5941

Boulud Is Back

Walking into Boulud Sud on the Upper West Side is like walking into any three or four star establishment of the late 90s and early 2000s. The room is quiet, filled with patterned banquettes, carpeted, and dotted with the oldest dining crowd in recent memory. The only people in my age group were being taken out to eat by their parents.

That didn't bode well for my wallet.

Actually, the menu is conceptually brilliant, divided into seafood, vegetables, and meat dishes. Every category has a series of small plates, appetizers (which might as well be called "slightly larger small plates), and entrees, all priced accordingly. This means that you can skate by without ever ordering a main course, which I took advantage of, instead ordering six small dishes, a side, and two desserts.

But the service left something to be desired. Before our server had even taken our drink order, our first four dishes had arrived at the table. Once I ordered a drink, ten minutes elapsed before the server came back to report that they were, in fact, out of the cocktail. After our final courses were cleared, we waited twenty minutes for dessert menus and another twenty minutes after our menus arrived, waiting for our order to be taken.

Nonetheless, the food was largely impressive. A take on a Greek salad was crisp and clean, speckled with fresh oregano. A plate of hummus, babaghanoush, and falafel came with thin, wafter crisps and a spicy mayonnaise. The bread that came gratis was two kinds of focaccia--one with black olives--and a crispy, fatty flatbread that went perfectly with our harissa marinated mussels, cooked out of the shell in a brunoise of tomato and carrots. Duck legs were wrapped in phyllo pastry and atop a sweet and thick date puree.

A rabbit porchetta, weirdly served cold, lacked flavor (as did the sad, underseasoned market carrots that accompanied it), but the blue prawns, head on, made up for that misstep. The prawns were perfectly cooked and seasoned and the heads were crunchy--I ate all four heads. Broccoli rabe was another disappointment, but dessert, when it finally arrived, was a dinner atonement. A grapefruit sorbet came in a hollowed grapefruit with halvah and segments of the fruit. Our second dish featured sweet and tangy plums over squares of a soft cinnamon cake that resembled, in texture, the fluffy inside of a sourdough loaf. It was a delicate and lovely end to a long meal.

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Boulud Sud

20 W. 64th Street

New York, NY 10023

212.595.1313

Shopping For The Perfect Pie

Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it came damn close. And I considered us lucky to get a table for three within minutes of entering Rubirosa, considering the crowd. It turns out that our table, hidden in a nook in the front of the restaurant, was oblivious to servers everywhere. Service: D plus.

But really, it was about the food. Rubirosa is the Manhattan branch of a long-standing Staten Island establishment, so it makes sense to go traditional. We ordered two bruschetta, one with mushrooms and pignoli and one with duck and caramelized onions. The bread was grilled and held up to the layer of topping. Even more traditional--and equally satisfying--was a plate of baked littleneck clams, salty and garlicky and complimented by fresh lemon wedges.

The pizza? Oh, the pizza. We ordered a small classic pie with mushrooms and olives (large enough to feed three people; buyer beware) and a small sausage and broccoli rabe pie, along with a side of grilled asparagus to keep things green. The classic pie hit all the right notes--a good ratio of sauce to cheese; ample yet not overwhelming toppings; a crispy crust that was neither too doughy nor too cracker-like. Unlike the pizzas of Lucali's and Keste, both personal favorites (and born of the Neopolitan style), Rubirosa is crispy throughout, reminding me a little of a great pie I once ate at Pulino's.

The sausage and broccoli pie didn't exactly disappoint, but it did come sans sauce, which is never my direction of choice. Bad service be damned; I'd return for another pie any day of the week.

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Rubirosa

235 Mulberry Street

New York, NY 10012

212.965.0500