[Pigging by Wilfrid: September 8, 2014]
First it was Matt Hamilton's Belcourt. Five years later, it was Calliope, by Gina Iverson and Eric Korsch. And now two years later, it's Contrada, and the chefs are Jason Audette and Alycia Harrington (pastry). It retains one Calliope owner, Eric Anderson.
Now, I'm sure there was something on this corner of East 4th Street and Second Avenue before Belcourt, but the place has just looked the same since Matt Hamilton opened in 2007.
Same doors open to the street, same plain tables and wooden banquettes, same small bar, same--charmingly stolid--bathroom doors. Same customers, for all I know. The cuisine has varied, of course, from Hamilton's new American, to a kind of take on modern French by Calliope, to Contrada's Italian-ish small plates. Oyster happy hour seems to survive all the changes.
Belcourt was enjoyable and useful, and I wrote about it for more than one outlet. Calliope won more enthusiastic reviews, but deterred my custom by serving me one of the most aversive dishes I'd eaten in years. Contrada is altogether a safer bet, although so far--and it's early days, and deep in the summer doldrums--it's looked very quiet. Even to the point of a manager standing at the door offering to explain the menu to likely customers.
The menu is Italian filtered through a contemporary Brooklyn-downtown lens, which means the cortini look like seasonal produce-based appetizers, and most of the dishes--including some fish and meat--are priced as small plates.
After a salty, rosemary roll, and a glass of sparkling wine which deserved its Babycham vessel, I ordered a bunch of the small plates, including a pasta I'd been forewarned was small. Size is relevant to value here, of course.
Get a peach from the greenmarket, for example, and serve some slices delicately garnished with celery and parsley and dressed in a light jalapeño oil. The result is a refreshing palate-cleanser--and I did admire the astonishing thinness and crispness of the celery pieces--but not much more than a few forkfuls of food.
Meats and cheeses are served at $5 per ounce, and this was a generous ounce of lardo, with grain mustard and some welcome hunks of toasted bread.
The head-on shrimp are priced per piece ($7), and they were good: big, fresh, juicy, with a simple scattering of garlic and parsley, and a few chili flakes to spice things up.
Shrewd diner will have realized by now that, while the menu prices appear reasonable ($6 to $15 for most items), you are going to spend considerably more if you want to gorge yourself. (A pound of lardo for $80?.) But you probably won't. This is a neighborhood restaurant (as implied by the name), and it's a place for grazing rather than a blow-out.
I finished with the agnolotti dal plin, a pile of fluffy pasta pillows filled with sweetcorn, and spattered with a few Marcona almonds. A taste of late summer, and actually no longer on the menu (there are now two pastas with pork, as well as cacio e pepe, and two pork mains as well as a serving of bavette).
If the sparkling Bisson was a disappointment, the Primitivo, from a simple list of glass wines ($9-$12) was suitable for the meal. There are signature cocktails too, and some wines with bottle age on the full list. Earnest, enjoyable--but is Contrada ready for the tidal wave of fashionable news restaurants which is going to smack down the East Village's defenses over the next few months?
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