Frank Bruni is no longer reviewing restaurants fro the New York Times but his sense of A-1 Italian has been proven time again. In recent interview in La Cucina Italiana, he was asked about his favorite NYC Italian restaurants. Below are five he felt were worth mentioning…(Note: the descriptions of these restauarants and their signature dishes are drawn from other sources like New York Magazine and Fodor’s.)
> Marea
www.marea-nyc.com; 240 Central Park S; New York, NY 10019-1457; (212) 582-5100. ”One of Chef White’s great pasta specialties is fusilli smothered in a delicately braised pork-shoulder ragù. Deprived of pork, he substitutes octopus then loads this already heavy dish with lumps of heart-stopping bone marrow. The sense of overkill is magnified by the grand entrée-size pasta portions, among them a dank pile of spinosini obscured in a swarm of pricey but tasteless langoustines, and tubes of house-made gramigne overwhelmed with smoked cod and too much speck. A heaping portion of crab-and-sea-urchin spaghetti had a lustrous, exotic quality to it, but nothing on the pasta list was quite as satisfying (or, at $23, as comparatively cheap) as the little ricotta-filled “pansotti” ravioli (served with a pesto artfully flavored with nettles), which contains no seafood at all. The seafood entrées, come in all sorts of baroque shapes and sizes. If it’s freshness you’re after, try the ivory-colored black bass (with artichokes, pine nuts, and pools of salsa verde) or the skate, piled over morels and a bed of green, butter-soaked summer peas. A seafood risotto is also available, along with an elaborate $45 “bordetto di pesce” soup from Italy’s Adriatic coast, which could have used a little more broth. Scallops were sweet and fresh, though weirdly slippery (they’re touched with more lardo), and if you’re not dieting, you’ll probably enjoy the Columbia River salmon, which the calorie-happy chef poaches in duck fat.—New York Magazine
> Lupa Osteria Romana
www.luparestaurant.com; 170 Thompson Street; NYC; (212) 982-5089. Lupa opened its doors on October 1, 1999 under the partnership of Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich, and Chef Mark Ladner. A salumeria serves Italian artisan meats and cheeses, house-made products such as canned tuna and guanciale, and a kitchen that is dedicated to creating dishes as traditionally Roman as possible, while skillfully substituting and supplementing ingredients that are out of season or unavailable in New York. The result is a Roman menu with a New York balance.
> Locanda Verde
www.locandaverdenyc.com; 377 Greenwich Street; New York, NY 10013-2338; (212) 925-3797 “The latest Italian restaurant in Robert De Niro’s star-crossed space is called Locanda Verde (“green inn”), and in style, conception, and tone it’s as different from its predecessor Ago as a raucous, deceptively sophisticated pop band is from the provincial touring company of a tattered old Broadway show. The most radical overhaul, however, is in the kitchen, which is now overseen by the celebrated chef Andrew Carmellini. Carmellini is a protégé of Daniel Boulud (he was head chef at Café Boulud for years), and he later ran the critically acclaimed Italian restaurant A Voce before leaving in a dispute with the owner. Carmellini is a master of classical French (and Italian) technique, but at Locanda Verde (where he is a partner), he chucks it all to cook “family style” food for the masses. His menu is filled with lots of fashionable, small-plate “cicchetti,” including mounds of fresh sheep’s-milk ricotta (sprinkled liberally with sea salt) and melty slices of “testa della casa” (headcheese) antipasti decked with tangy pickled vegetables. The best of these early finger foods, though, are the crostini, which the chef piles alternately with faintly spicy summer corn (over toasted prosciutto bread), smooth dabs of puréed chicken liver, and mounds of blue crab leavened with jalapeño and a light touch of cream. There are only seven “secondi” entrées on the menu at Locanda Verde, and, in line with Carmellini’s populist mission, none costs over $25.”—New York Magazine
> Peasant
www.peasantnyc.com; 194 Elizabeth Street; New York, NY 10012-4255; (212) 965-9511. “The crowd at this rustic restaurant is stylishly urban. Inspired by the proverbial “peasant” cuisine where meals were prepared in the kitchen hearth, chef-owner Frank DeCarlo cooks all of his wonderful food in a bank of wood- or charcoal-burning ovens, from which the heady aroma of garlic perfumes the room. Don’t fill up on the crusty bread and fresh ricotta, though, or you’ll miss out on other flavorful Italian fare like sizzling sardines that arrive in terra-cotta pots, or rotisserie lamb that’s redolent of fresh herbs.”—Fodor’s
> Convivio
convivionyc.com; 45 Tudor City Place; New York, NY 10017; (212) 599-5045 “Convivio is chef Michael White’s ambitious reimagining of an upscale Italian restaurant in Tudor City that was called L’Impero. To provide a sense of sunny, Italian lightness (Convivio is also the name of a famous restaurant in Rome), the interior designer, Vicente Wolf, has covered the walls with white reflective glass and fitted them with installations of shimmering nylon string. The old lamp shades have been replaced with modish ones hung with orange glass spheres. The waiters have been outfitted with rust-colored shirts and the banquettes covered in Italianate crimson, like the inside of a grand Sicilian railway car. The four-course, $59 prix fixe dinner is $5 cheaper than the old one, but now you can choose from a mind-boggling 53 items, many of which change on a daily, or seasonal, basis. There are nine authentic varieties of the pre-antipasti finger food called sfizi (artichokes tossed with slivers of mint, fat risotto croquettes colored with saffron, soft bits of baby eggplant touched with chile), and enough antipasto to feed a small army of Sicilian peasants. Try the skewer of grilled quail with sweet onions, the faintly boozy chicken-liver crostini made with onions sautéed in Marsala wine, and the breaded sardines, which are dunked in creamy salmoriglio sauce (like Sicilian tartar sauce) and filled with smoky provolone. It’s in the realm of pastas that White demonstrates why he’s become known, in certain Rabelaisian circles, as midtown’s answer to Mario Batali. Like Batali, the rotund, gregarious chef is a voracious scholar of regional Italian cuisine. And like Batali, he has the ability to take classic recipes and imbue them with his own combination of lightness and soul. I’m thinking of the handcrafted maccheroni, folded Roman style with egg yolk, pepper, salty bits of pancetta, and summer peas, which was followed to our table by a bowl of baby-size orecchiette dunked in a rich Sicilian ragù made with tripe and lightened with fennel. There are densely textured ragùs made with braised pork shoulder (served over a nest of fusilli and finished with a lush fonduta made with caciocavallo cheese), fat tortelli ingeniously stuffed with tomato, onion, and cured pork jowl, and a weirdly ethereal recipe from Sardinia called malloreddus made with saffron, blue crab, and a hint of fresh sea urchin.” —New York Magazine
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“An Evening with Mario Batali”
The actress was not present at the 
