Emporio
- Cuisine: Roman-style
- Vibe: ’20s trattoria
- Occasion: Group dinner, casual date, long lunch
- Don’t Miss: Grilled lamb Scottadito
- Price: Appetizers $10, entrées $18, dessert $6
- Reservations: Recommended
- Phone: (212) 966-1234
- Location: 231 Mott St., near Prince St.
Over the past few months, five Roman-style restaurants have opened in Manhattan. What is it about Roman cooking? For starters, it’s simple and cheap. And right now, simple and cheap is a very good thing.
Roma means carciofi alla giuda (Jewish-style fried artichokes), fried
asparagus, fried zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella and
anchovies. Rome means salads made with fresh fava beans, chickpeas,
anchovies and mint. And Pecorino Romano, a salty, aged sheep’s milk
cheese. Rome is also famous for pizza with wafer-thin crust topped with
mozzarella, tomato, capers and anchovies. If you don’t know what a
Roman pie tastes like, visit Emporio, a trattoria that opened in Nolita
six weeks ago.
The pie crusts at Emporio are so terrifically crunchy and thin, they’re more like Frisbee-size crackers. The best pizzaiolas – the guys making the pies – are true chefs.
Chef Riccardo Buitoni has two popular restaurants in New York – Aurora SoHo and Aurora Brooklyn.
This time, he wanted to try Rome and pizza. As it happens, Roman-style
pizza is his forte. He tops his pies with everything from house-cured
pancetta, red onion, rosemary and potato to eggplant, pesto, San
Marzano tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.
My favorite is a warm
Frisbee cracker topped with super-smoky guanciale, kale and Pecorino
cream. Buitoni cures the guanciale himself. As for the Pecorino cream,
he melts two kinds of Pecorino into milk and the result is outstanding.
Really, some of the best dishes come from the wood-burning oven,
including the porchetta, made with pork from Flying Pigs Farm and a
dessert calzone filled with Nutella, ricotta and walnuts.
Emporio
is pretty Roman. You won’t find generic Italian dishes of the Caprese
salad or penne pomodoro sorts. “When in Rome” is a cliché for good
reason. It’s a fine credo for dining out.
When at Emporio, get the lamb scottadito. In Italian, scottadito
translates to “burn your finger,” meaning use your hands and gnaw the
meat off the bone. Order the Stracchino cheese – a wonderfully creamy
cheese from Milan
– with sweet, roasted cherry tomatoes and drizzled with vincotto. Also
order the fried artichokes seasoned with sea salt and lemon.
For dessert, I liked the sheep’s milk ricotta tart with a rustic spelt tart and Marsala-spiked sabayon.
Not
everything works at Emporio. Especially the Frascati-braised rabbit,
which was Frascati-soaked and unusually fatty. Then there was the
tonnarelli cacio e pepe (Pecorino cheese & black pepper sauce).
Everyone
at my table was convinced someone had knocked a glass of water into our
bowl in the kitchen. I’m not pointing any fingers, but the chef did
mention a splash of cooking water from the pasta.
The black
kale and grilled mushroom salad would have been great had it not been
so aggressively dressed in egg yolk, Dijon mustard and Parmesan.
The
atmosphere at Emporio is laidback – salvaged wood benches, white subway
tile walls, ripped brown paper place mats and tin bread buckets. Yet,
Buitoni seems dedicated to organic ingredients and thoughtful cooking.
He’s also a surprisingly talented pizzaiola, which makes Emporio a pizzeria with a lot of other good food on the menu.
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Top notch service, great atmosphere, focused wine list. In terms of the decor, fantastic!Really lovely. I started off with the grilled octopus starter, excellent. The cheese dish came next, so creamy and delicate. For Entrees, we got the steak and the cheese pasta, Wow,on both. Our server was really knowledgeable, and the manager came over more than once to check on us. Well Done Emporio