In a world dominated by French culinary technique and its derivatives, assessing and rating Italian cuisine properly is somewhat of a chore. The difficulty begins when one notices that Italian culinary philosophy, and its corresponding technique, is fairly simplistic when compared to the technique employed by its Northern neighbor. But the difficulties do not stem from technique alone. Compounding the issue is a significantly large in size chorus of diners who claim that simple is better and as such, Italian is superior to French and the other cuisines it has inspired. It’s a scrum that is difficult to settle, as there is no clear way to negotiate a winner without one accepting certain assumptions as to what makes for great cuisine. Or maybe I should say cucina just for the sake of fair play.
I once heard a wise man whose name I forget boil the differences between the cuisines down to the following generalization.
"La Stratagia di cucina Italiana revolves around natural pan juices created during the cooking process that are used as light gravies. Whereby French cuisine relies on concentrated stocks and sauces prepared ahead of time combined with pan juices in order to enhance the flavor and texture of the cuisine."
I know that seems simplistic but there is a lot of truth to it. And if one were to try and analyze why there are so many more highly rated restaurants using French technique than there are restaurants using Italian technique, the wise man’s explanation seems to play a very important role in it.
Regardless of whether one subscribes to the “pan juice theory”, media outlets that review and rank restaurants overwhelmingly favor French restaurants over Italian. Not only is this the case in the France based Michelin guides who have awarded 19 restaurants in France their highest rating of three rosettes, while at the same time deeming only three restaurants in Italy worthy of this honor, our very own New York Times doesn’t rate a single New York City Italian restaurant to be worthy of its highest rating which is four stars. This pattern of French restaurants outpacing their Italian counterparts is pretty much consistent in newspapers and magazines across the country. In fact there are really just a handful who hold the highest rating like Chicago’s Spiaggia and Los Angeles’s Valentino. But by any reasonable measure, evidence shows that Italian restaurant have an uphill battle when trying to achieve the golden ring.
Which brings us to Mario Batali’s and Joe Bastianich’s new restaurant Del Posto. What makes Del Posto unusual, and what makes the short description on the basic differences between French and Italian culinary theory, and how that impacts the ratings they get relevant, is that the pre-opening hype revolving around Del Posto was that this was the duo's attempt at creating an Italian restaurant that was going to get a four star rating from the New York Times. Beginning with stories of an installation that cost $12,000,000 (coincidentally the same amount that the Per Se installation cost) and tales of service from silver carts, Batali himself went on the record to say that he was trying to revive the “Italian grand dining experience.” It sounded noble, but for those of us who are keen observers of restaurant ratings, I coudln't think of any similar restaurant that had earned the highest rating. The restaurants in Italy that had received 3 Michelin stars had a decidedly French edge to them, albeit while clearly maintaining their Italian roots. But given that Batali had single-handedly created a new cuisine at his restaurant Po and then Babbo (forgive me if I am someone who preferred Po), then maybe he could pull it off after all and who was I to doubt him.
Then one day, a few weeks before the opening, a printed version of the Del Posto menu became available online. Rather than the type of menu that caused such interest when Babbo first opened, with dishes likewarm lamb's tongue vinaigrette and mint love letters with spicy lamb sausage, jaws dropped all over Manhattan when people saw a menu of standard Northern Italian fare that wasn't much different than what you would find at an upscale restaurant in Nassau or Westchester counties. Ther few items that did jump off the page did so more because of their cost than because of culinary ingenutity. A $60 lobster risotto for two was an eyecatcher. But by far the items that caused the buggest buzz among the dining community commentary were the roast meats available for tables of six. My favorite one was the roast leg of lamb for six that rang the bell at $210, or about 350% what it would cost you to buy a similar leg of lamb at one of the cities top butchers. It was clear that the issue of whether Del Posto deserved four stars from the New York Times rested on whether Batali had figured out how to reinvent the leg of lamb. I was game to find out and I booked a table.
When I finally arrived at the restaurant, the first thing I noticed was that the space was nowhere as opulent as what people were advertising. In fact the installation seemed so ordinary and undistinguished our table remarked that we could have been in any number of upscale hotels. If this installation cost $12,000,000. you certainly couldn't see it on the surface. Aside from a beautiful marble floor which must have cost them a few lire, there wasn't a single interesting architectural detail in the space. As Mrs. P astutely noted, "it doesn't feel very New York" To be honest, I was expecting and looking forward to some over-the-top opulence. But instead what I got was the Ritz-Carlton Naples. As if my disappointment with the architecture wasn't enough, we had to wait 30 minutes for our table and we didn't sit down until 9:15. As Mrs P would say, that's pretty late for a school night.
The waiter handed out the menus and rather than the somewhat funky looking brasserie style menu that I had seen online, this was a posh leather holder with an ordinary looking menu printed on nice stock. Once again the design was generic and I might as well have been looking at the menu for the lobby restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. I flipped the page looking for the Rolls Royce of roasted meats but they were nowhere to be found. I motioned our waiter over to the table to ask about them and he started explaining that they had just changed to the spring menu and they had taken the meats off blah, blah, blah. Let me translate that for those of you out there who do not understand restaurant speak. Nobody takes roast leg of lamb off the menu on March 30th when spring lamb is just coming into season. The only reason to do it is because it isn't selling well. That interaction turned out to be more than an omen of what was to come.
I started my meal with the sweetbreads. A number of people told me they enjoyed the sweetbreads so I figurde I would try them myself. Here is what I got for $16;
Pretty paltry in terms of portion size. The flavor wasn't bad, but when I tell you that the dish was as ordinary as the decor I'm not making it up. This was a sweetbread preparation that one could get in countless Northern Italian restaurants all over the U.S. You know, the type of place called Casa Gulllio or Villa Maria in a place like Westbury or Larchmont. Mrs P's appetizer, the cauliflower sformato served with skate and grapefruit was better on a number of counts as the combination was unusual and the execution of the dish was at a reasonably high level. But still a long way off from quatro rosettas.
While I couldn't have an overpriced roast leg of lamb any longer (it's an irony of the foodie lifestyle that one hankers for a $210 leg of lamb in order to see if there's anything to it), the $60 risotto for two was on my mandatory must have list and fortunately it was still on the menu. I ordered it as an in-between course and Jeremy our waiter (who was superb by the way as was the rest of the service), talked us into ordering it for the table and splitting it four ways. It was sage advice as not only was the portion size sufficient, the dish wasn't really that good and a quarter portion was plenty. I think this might have been my single biggest disappointment at the meal. I had recently been to Europe and had ethereal seafood risottos at both Da Vittorio in Bergamo and Sant Pao outside of Barcelona. But the Del Posto lobster risotto was watery, did not have a brodo that could be distinguished in anyway, and the rice wasn't cooked or flavored in a way that was memorable or could distinguish it from hundreds of other seafood risottos you could get in Northern Italian restaurants all over the U.S. The pictures tell the whole story:
For my main course I was tempted to order roast meat but I couldn't resist the bollito misto served from the trolly. Could there be a dish that is more emblematic of the Italian grand dining experience than a luxurious bollito misto served from a silver cart? I imagined I was at Fini in Modena and the trolly was stocked with a myriad of meats, each cooked perfectly and served with a series of sauces for dipping. Well at least the trolly kept its part of the bargain as the bollito seemed like it was prepared by the Sabrett hot dog guy. I mean some pictures speak for themselves and I need to say nothing more than to tell you to look at this picture;
Truth be told, it tasted better than it looks. First of all, the presentation is great. They roll the cart over to your table and the waiter lifts the meats out of the brodo one at a time, slices some off, and arranges it on a plate. On the evening I was there, the five different meats they were serving were stuffed capon, zampone, short ribs, veal tongue and stuffed breast of veal. Unfortunately aside from the short ribs which I could have had an entire order of by themselves, the bollito continued the evening's theme of the food being del ordinario. Served with a small bowl of brodo with vegetables along with three different dipping sauces, the brodo was simply too fatty. A good bollito, pot au feu, cocida etc. relies on a well skimmed broth. Well this brodo was full of globules of fat and that gave the dish a certain slimy factor that was offputting and which in my estimation, made the brodo unappealing. Mrs P on the other hand ordered the squab which arrived in a microscopic portion and which after one bite she proclaimed as too gamey to eat (confirmed by someone else at the table although I didn't try it). The others ordered the roast veal chop for two which was tasty, but ultimately just a veal chop without any type of special sauce or garnish.
We skipped dessert out of lack of interest. But the one thing they served that I did enjoy was a chocolate tasting at the end of the meal. I'm not the world's biggest chocophile but, this was an interesting exercise in cacoa. They served three different types but by far the best chocolate was a single source Michel Cluizel from Honduras that was 77% cacao and had amazing complexity that was similar to the type of complexity you would find in a wine. Speaking of wine, they have a good list at Del Posto with numerous bottles that are priced fairly. We had an unoaked pinot blanc/chardonnay blend from Schiopetto and a 1997 Sasseti Pertimali Brunello di Montacino Riserva.
In the context of a discussion as to whether this restaurants warrants a four star rating, well I could tell you that to a person at our table, we barely thought it merited a single star. That the New York Times gave Del Posto 3 stars boggles my mind and in my opinion, can only be a product of Frank Bruni's bias in favor of Italian cuisine (he was the Times Rome correspondent you know.) But to rate Del Posto as highly as Bouley, or even Babbo, is not only shocking, it delegitimizes the Times more than any other example I can think of. But aside from the ongoing debate about the merit of the cuisine, I was more interested in coming up with a reason as to why I felt that Del Posto failed as a dining concept. The best I can work out is the following.
A restaurant is a celebration of a chef's cuisine. Look at all of the important restaurants and you will see that what sets restaurants apart and what attracts diners to is the unique signature of the chef. One has to look no further than Babbo to see how Batali's unique signature is what makes Babbo stand out from its competition. But where Del Posto fails, and this is before you ever get to uninteresting menus and fatty brodo, is that Mario Batali did not create a new version of the Italian grand dining experience in conjunction with opening the restaurant. And reinventing the experience is at the heart of getting a four star rating. It isn't something you can achieve with an expensive installation, or silver carts and waiters who wear black suits. It's about the food. And unless the talk of four stars was just hype to get people in the door, and Mario and Joe are really interested in having Las Vegas on the Hudson, I don't see how it is possible given the cuisine they have plotted out at Del Posto. On yes and then there's the case of the fatty brodo and watery risotto. C
your review was right on the money - actually for a restaurant like this - the most memorable thing I have to say about it is there wasn't one dish on the menu that I could say I truly wished I had tried. the only memorable thing was the check!
Posted by: carol giogilio | May 10, 2006 at 10:34 AM
I don't understand why they couldn't have made a better restaurant. It isn't like Mario and crew don't know what they are doing. I guess some things are just a bad idea and no matter how much you think it through it will never turn out right.
Posted by: Steve Plotnicki | May 10, 2006 at 02:52 PM
this risottto looks baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! Like soup with rice in it. I can't judge on how it tasted but it defintely doesnt look like a technically well done risotto.
regards,
alex
Posted by: Alexis | November 17, 2006 at 04:30 PM
Hi!
Your review is great! I totally agree with you... http://www.aistesite.com/weblog/2006/11/the_ridiculous_.html
Cheers
Aiste
Posted by: Aiste | November 18, 2006 at 08:28 PM
there's no a single desirable dish from the menu, it not only looks bad, it tastes so bad.
Posted by: cialis online | April 29, 2011 at 01:31 PM
It's the extreme cooking!
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Posted by: sildenafil | August 03, 2011 at 12:39 PM
Nice food I like it. I never taste such delicious food before. It's really very yummy taste. I have many recipes to making such foods and I will try out for such types of food on my home.
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