On a latest Friday evening, because the prime-time night rush was beginning to subside, I dined with Harry Types and Zoë Kravitz, the are-they-or-aren’t-they couple of the second. He, Errol Flynn–ish along with his new mustache, and she or he, doe-eyed and sylphlike, have been at a desk within the again. I was at a window seat up entrance, however why cut up hairs? All of us needed to be at I Cavallini.
“The little horses,” because the title interprets, is the ten-years-later follow-up to the 4 Horsemen, the demi-size, sneakily formidable wine bar that helped uncap pure wine as a New York phenomenon. Chef Nick Curtola’s small plates on the 4 Horsemen — “4H,” because it’s referred to as by the cognoscenti — have been ingenious however approachable, far-reaching and freely borrowing. (Curtola credit California roots and European coaching for the combo, which typically leaned Spanish, different instances Italian, typically Japanese.) One of many restaurant’s companions is LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, however it shortly outran any blot of celeb–restaurant standing. 4H made horse ladies of us all.
A decade is a very long time to attend for a sequel to a smash success, and the burden of anticipation is heavy. As it’s, I Cavallini has an unimaginable job. It should immediately be the very best and essentially the most fascinating. It’s, genuinely, a hotter, cozier proposition: a neighborhood spot. It might be unimaginable for I Cavallini to flee its sibling’s lengthy shadow. Actually, because it’s proper throughout the road. The identical companions run each: Curtola oversees the kitchens. Murphy stays the paterfamilias. Amanda McMillan, the managing director and associate (and, for transparency’s sake, a longtime buddy from earlier than both of us labored in meals), often scurries between the 2. Justin Chearno, the eating places’ wine evangelist, had been engaged on the record earlier than his premature demise final yr; Flo Barth, one in every of his outdated deputies, is now stewarding an all-Italian record in his picture and reminiscence.
However there are sign variations, too. Twice the room means roughly half the fuss. The outdated Fiore house has been apportioned and barely shrunken with little glassed-in cubicles carved out of a wide-open barroom and the ceiling dropped to comfortable all of it up. The artwork on the partitions is by employees and mates (together with Stacy Fisher, Chearno’s widow) and telephone-wire lighting fixtures in candy-apple crimson lend a little bit of ’80s Italo-Mod. Each the entrance room, with a wraparound minibar, and the lengthy correct bar within the second of the three rooms are held for walk-ins, although at this level, the extra apt description could also be “for these keen to attend.” That lengthy bar possesses the complete cocktail capabilities the 4 Horsemen doesn’t and is overseen by Jojo Colonna, previously of Attaboy, who gussies up spritzes with fino sherry and gin with Sungold tomatoes.
The meals I had was by no means lower than good and sometimes outright great. The menu is split into antipasti, salads, pasta, and secondi, and every part is cut up, kind of evenly, between trattoria conventional and hints of Horsemen. On a couple of visits, I discovered a mix-and-match strategy to those divergent types labored greatest. Opening chatter has landed on an antipasto salad of nervetti — beef tendons, euphemized for these not already transformed to them by town’s many hot-pot institutions — the place the tendons are boiled to a jellied chaw and served chilly with their very own aspic, candy onions, and a delicate chive-blossom French dressing. They’re scrumptious, a cool, calmly bracing exercise of a starter, although the identical tendons are served with extra fireworks throughout the road, the place they’re fried to crackling and served on high of punchy beef tartare. I loved Curtola’s eel toasts simply as a lot, a fantastic addition to an eel mini-craze gripping town, the seafood fried in a light-weight, puffy batter and served, in a twist on the Sicilian pasta con le sarde mixture, with pine nuts and golden raisins.
There are a variety of dishes on the menu that tickle on this approach. My favourite pasta was farfallone in Calabrian-chile butter — large bow ties, the dimensions and form of a thin pack of Vogue cigarettes — whose crisped batons of pancetta gave the dish a smoky shock. Little gnocchetti swim alongside Zolfini beans in a deeply shrimpy broth with a light-weight, clear taste of the ocean.
Clockwise from high left: Exterior, gnochetti with shrimp, the eating room, lamb sausage with squash. Hugo Yu.
Clockwise from high left: Exterior, gnochetti with shrimp, the eating room, lamb sausage with squash. Hugo Yu.
However the phrase I scribbled again and again in my pocket book was discount. It’s not a lot that Curtola’s dishes are easy however that he has a type of stalwart confidence in their very own important flavors and a cussed unwillingness to decorate them up. Typically I needed he would. His rooster, served golden, flattened, and in six sectioned items (one nonetheless bearing a claw), was very rooster. A particular of Denver steak was simply that, served with a aspect of grilled peppers, which have been simply these. (I did love the roasted-onion-butter slathered over the meat.) His pesto is an excellent pesto — much less oily than most, nearly saladlike — and about as Platonically pesto because it will get.
Whether or not you need purity or palimpsest in your restaurant meals is as much as you. On the 4 Horsemen, a lot of the enjoyable derives from surprising mixtures of components and flavors. At I Cavallini, it’s as if the dishes adopted Coco Chanel’s well-known (and certain apocryphal) injunction to take one accent off earlier than leaving the home. Then once more, complication shouldn’t be its personal reward. Whether or not Harry sticks round after the hype subsides is anybody’s guess. However I’ll be again, and if it’s not right here, I’ll see him on the subsequent one, I’m certain.
Out Again
It’s not open but, however a again backyard was a spotlight of the house’s earlier tenant — count on it by subsequent spring.
Dolci Vita
The colder a dessert, the extra I favored it. Gelato and sorbetto: Sure. Tiramisu: High-quality. Wan olive-oil cake: Skip.
And For After
Ask properly and somebody at I Cav might allow you to into Nightmoves, the group’s semi-private bar and dance flooring adjoining to 4 Horsemen.
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