[Pigging by Wilfrid: June 23, 2008]
"We are honored that you should bring us your business, and Franco will be here to greet you."
Never has a request for a dinner reservation been met so solicitously.
And Franco, whose identity was initially a mystery, was indeed on hand when we arrived, a compact, courtly presence in the dining room, and one of many things about Queen which haven't changed in decades.
The location, I'm told, has changed. They shifted a few numbers along the block some years back. Otherwise, Queen Marie Italian Restaurant - to do it full justice - has been feeding the local political and mercantile community for fifty years come September.
And on the evidence of my recent visit, it's now feeding a broad swathe of younger customers too, as the demographics of Brooklyn evolve and diversify. Fittingly, the dining room dispenses with Liddle-Iddly kitsch, being clean, modern, pastel and cool. In fact more cold than cool, no expense being spared on the A.C.
Fittingly too, the menu has two sides to it: a short list of traditional red-sauce favorites which founding chef Anthony Vitiello would surely recognize (and printed, agreeably, in traditional italics too), and a longer list of modern dishes which shrewdly acknowledge the demand for fresh, seasonal ingredients, relatively lightly treated. These are described as the daily specials of the fratelli Vitiello, for the founders sons, Pasquino and Vincent, now direct the restaurant.
Almost as good as the pea fricassée, chicken livers arrived in a rich, dark, oniony balsamic sauce. A small polenta cake too. I think one person of ordinary appetite would struggle to eat this, then tuck into an entrée.
By this point, the party was well advanced into the wine too. My expectations had been low; for whatever reason, I had anticipated a plastic-covered list of Chiantis and Valpollicellos of indiscernible vintage, with a few ruinously expensive Barolos for expense accounts. Not at all: a simple, mostly inexpensive selection featured a number of the better producers of economical but enjoyable wines from Italy's less promoted regions.
The Librandi winery in Calabria produces some mid-priced wines of distinction - the Gravello, for example, which uses cabernet sauvignon to add structure to the fragrant local varietal, galiopo. Their everyday drinking wine, Ciro Rosso, is a bargain, and while it's not discounted by Queen at $27 the bottle, it remains a bargain. In Campania, Feudi di San Gregorio offers a respectable portfolio of whites and reds, and the Falanghina is a good, crisp food choice at around $30. Yes, you can spend two hundred on an undated Tignanello, but there's a Taurasi, a Conero Rosso, a Cannonau - a creditable and imaginative list.
There was a frittura mista of seafood and vegetables, not quite as lavish as the other appetizers. It seemed just fine, but I only recall eating a shrimp.
There was an unseemly rush for mozzarella too, clean and refreshing; home-made.
One diner in the party couldn't be torn from the red-sauce entrées. This is a school of cooking, as much Italian-American as Italian, which offers me no echoes of childhood. Sure, I was given spaghetti bolognese as a kid, and remember much macaroni with tomato sauce on holidays in Italy. But the heavy, cheese and tomato-crusted, pungently garlicky cooking which is legend in some parts of the United States - I can take it or leave it.
Having said that, I can imagine a much worse version chicken parmesan; and indeed, can't imagine much better. The huge chicken breast remained defiantly juicy under the onslaught of melted cheese. The kind of person who can order and devour this easily copes with the heaping side dish of penne which accompanies it.
A cutlet (which I didn't sample) would have been plate-sized, were it not for the size of the plates.
Scallops were truly jumbo too, and six or seven to the serving. The saffron sauce was an interesting touch, and green and white asparagus completed the plate.
For myself, a light and nutritious main: simply the osso bucco, a savage slab of veal shank, long-braised, wearing a jaunty mushroom cap. The sauce tipped more towards red wine than tomatoes, which reflects my preference.
Dessert, really, is superfluous. I have eaten some poor (and surprisingly expensive) Italian food at joints around this city touted as old-school, traditional, and even - improbably - delicious. I had pretty much given up on the genre. Queen redeems the reputation; it serves not the best and priciest ingredients in the city, but what it serves is fresh, good and well-priced. The cooking is not risky or inventive, but it acknowledges the twenty first century. It is a friendly restaurant. And one can't underestimate the friendliness of the prices: ample wine and almost too much food, about sixty bucks a head. A check which would easily be doubled in Manhattan.
A thoroughly informative web-site right here.
