The radicchio is very tough, and so is the big blob of mozzarella that it rests upon, but the Caesar salad, a study in minimalism, cannot be faulted. I don't quite see what's New World about grilled radicchio Trevisano and smoked mozzarella, and Caesar salad, an Old World appetizer, dates back no further than the early 20th century and was invented in Tijuana. New World opens the door to enticing entrees like Chilean sea bass baked in a parchment package with dried eggplant, cherry tomatoes and mint, or pastas like spaghetti with big chunks of lobster in a very spicy sauce of roasted tomatoes and oven-dried cherry tomatoes, whose flavor is so sweetly concentrated they make you overlook the fact that the lobster, overwhelmed by its sauce, becomes a texture rather than a taste. Just break off pieces and sop.Ĭentolire's second gimmick is the way the menu divides appetizers, pastas and entrees into two categories, Old World and New World. Cioppino, done as a seafood potpie, seems more like a novelty dish than a big improvement over more orthodox cioppinos, but the broth has depth and intensity, and the dough lid solves the problem of what to do with the excess. I cannot say that this approach does much for baked calamari, which dries out in the oven, but the golden-brown dough lid creates an aromatic sauna for a baby chicken and artichokes in a thick, marjoram-suffused sauce whose flavors insinuate themselves all the way to the bone. It's shorthand for rustic, and most of the dishes cooked in the coccio are also covered in a thick bread dough, crosta di pane, that transforms them into an Italian potpie.
At Centolire, it is the coccio, or crock, that appears as a little symbol next to dishes like baked calamari, chicken scarpariello and stinco, a whopping veal shank braised with rigatoni that is intended for four diners. Luongo, along with the hundred lire, must have gotten a bottomless supply of gimmicks from his mother, because he is incapable of opening a restaurant without one. The name alludes to an old immigrant song about a child who begs his mother for a hundred lire so he can head off to America. Luongo is once again hitting his high C's. The food, doled out in substantial portions, is honest, well executed and deeply satisfying. The restaurant, in the two-level space that once belonged to Celadon, is a large, good-looking trattoria with a warm, beating heart. This dubious track only adds to the appeal of Centolire, a surprise return to form by Mr. Luongo has seemed more interested in cashing in than doing the hard work of preparing good food. Luongo was running neck and neck with Mario Perillo for the title of Mr. Il Cantinori begat Le Madri, which begat assorted Coco Pazzos, and before long, Mr. His restaurants, by combining high quality with flashy presentation, put sizzle back in the steak Florentine.
WHEN Pino Luongo burst on the New York scene nearly 20 years ago with Il Cantinori, he looked like a culinary Pavarotti in the making.
0 kommentar(er)
