[Pigging by Wilfrid: November 16, 2009]
Danny Meyer's new Roman trattoria in the former Wakiya space at the Gramercy Hotel is excellent, and I am going to tell you exactly why.
I dined there late on day three: too soon to review a restaurant? Sure, but in this case the food, wine and service didn't miss a beat.
Unfair, certainly, to visit a restaurant so soon after opening and come out complaining about service glitches or a slow kitchen or dishes which just miss the mark. When it comes to such an all-round polished and professional performance as this, I see no harm in getting the word out early.
Get to the point: four reasons it's so good.
(1) Maialino doesn't just "evoke" a Roman trattoria. I am so over all this evoking - a series of publicist-driven fantasies. Meyer and chef Nick Anderer (formerly at Gramercy Tavern) have seized the pig by the tail. They mean it. Meat here is not edited down into neat, New York-friendly terrines and "torchons," not boned and and trimmed and civilized. From the small, oval plates to the candidly unadorned entrées, Maialino says "old Europe" in a mouthwatering way. And I do mean Europe - I was reminded of Pied de Cochon in Les Halles as much as any backstreet canteen in Rome.
(2) Maialino is unique. We have upscale Italian - SD26, Felidia - we have countless red sauce joints, and we have the Batali empire. Maialino is different: okay, the closest thing to Maialino is Lupa, but Batali's osteria Romana is, dare I say it, a tamer affair of greenmarket vegetables and composed plates.
(3) Maialino squares the fine dining/new paradigm circle. What? Well the critics have been bullying us for the last couple of years into acknowledging that the way we eat now is by bellying up to a no reservation dining counter and slouching over a batch of small plates, served in random order, shouting between bites over the kitchen's choice of death metal and classic rock. Maialino is relaxed; it's informal; it serves all kinds of pig parts. But it's also casually elegant - over checked trattoria table cloths, Meyer lays white linen. Service is not hipsterish. And you can - and should - reserve.
(4) Maialino is sweetly priced. The flexible menu, offering salumi, antipasti, primi, secondi, contorni, cheese and dessert, allows for a blow-out meal. But a $9 plate of house coppa, a pasta dish, just one cheese, and you've spent just forty bucks before drinking. As we shall see, I knocked the bell, but my food cost for four belt-stretching courses was under $100.
Enough. Let's eat what is now in the running for the Pink Pig's plate of 2009, the zampina e borlotti, or trotter and beans.
Seeing as how this is Italian, I felt obliged to sample a pasta. This particular pasta dish turned out to more like meat with a pasta garnish. Malfatti, or literally "badly made" pasta, shows up here as raggedy strips glistening with a buttery sauce. The suckling pig ragu is scarcely a sauce at all - rather fork-tender portions of pale, rich pork. In fact, having sampled the kitchen's way with the skin and now the meat of the creature, I am going to place a confident bet that the half suckling pig for two ($64, and served to the table alongside me) is outstanding.
The lamb neck, abbacchio alla cacciatora, took me back to a restaurant in Burgos, Spain, which specialised in the service of suckling pigs and baby lambs, the delicate cuts served simply in a pool of fatty juice. Some of the entrées here are accompanied by vegetables, I'm told. Not this fellow. Two discs of meat, fat and bone, cut right through the neck of a young lamb - Damien Hirst-worthy. The meat fell aoart in the rich, Frascati and rosemary flavored gravy. I admit, this dish is portioned to share, with a vegetable side - or at least that's how it felt after the pig foot and the pasta. What's more, if the kitchen nails braised lamb with such aplomb, you know the oxtail with tomato and celery will be every bit as good.
No dessert, please, just cheese. I chose three ($11) from a list of around a dozen. Roman Cacio, Gregoriano from Abruzzi (both sheep milk), and the hard Piave Vecchio from Venice (cow). The Gregoriano, with which i was unfamiliar, played a slow fugue of sweet, sour and herbal notes. temperature was perfect.
The cheese came with some slices of baguette and tastes of sunflower honey and dark grape must - thankfully served on the side rather than on the cheese. The breads which had arrived earlier from the bread station (yes, there's a bread station and a separate salumi/formaggi station) had included Sullivan Street foccccia and some cheesy breadsticks. Flavored, house-made breads (I believe I heard Percorino and speck) can be purchased.
More than replete, I sat back and watched the rain romantically falling over Gramercy Park through the light curtain. This is bound to be a busy restaurant (the bar was raucous) but the back dining room, low lit and timbered, is soothing. Honestly, it looks a lot like the gramercy tavern dining room, although fittings are humbler. After a prosecco, the meats were well accompanied by two Barolos with some bottle age (the '95 smooth and ready, the '97 still tight but intriguing) - something over twenty wines available by glass and quartino, if I counted right. And finally an espresso - Californian, and the only thing I didn't much like all night.
I congratulate myself on grabbing this early reservation at what will be a very popular destination, all memories of the cremated duck at USC expunged. Make an effort to go. This a good and important restaurant.
