‘The real Cesare is back,” a relieved friend said one night at Cesare Casella’s hotly awaited Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto. Earlier meals had been duds. The herbs for which the chef is famous — he wears rosemary in his shirt pocket! — were AWOL. Did he think Upper East Siders wouldn’t take to his true Tuscan style?
More recent visits brought forth a big “whew!” Good Italian cooking is scarce on Madison Avenue, home to notoriously overpriced Nello. This winning, three-times-larger and classier edition of Casella’s cramped Upper West Side original, Salumeria Rosi, is the game-changer. It’s expensive (pasta $19 to $24, mains mostly in the $30s), but what do you expect?
The Lucca-born chef has been a prime mover on the Italian scene since the early 1990s, when he ran kitchens in the Pino Luongo empire’s glory days. His Tuscan envelope-stretching later reached its apex at Beppe, where pan-Mediterranean and North African flavors made the cuisine new.
Casella rebounded from his sloppy Tuscan-Texan fling Maremma with Salumeria on Amsterdam Avenue. The East Side sequel is also a partnership with Italy’s salumeria specialist Grupo Parmacotto; like the first, it’s fronted by a retail counter glistening with cured meats, cheese and fancy regional items.
From the sidewalk, it doesn’t look like a restaurant at all. But the narrow counter zone flows into wider, red-and-cream dining rooms conjured by Hollywood set designer Dante Ferretti. They’re spacious but clubby, wrapped in “ancient Roman” murals cheerier than the ones in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A long rear mirror flatters inventively tinted blondes and doting men who peruse a grand wine list, guided by savvy sommelier Michael Doctor. Months of hype about the place omitted an important fact: There’s no full bar because, under antiquated city rules, the restaurant is too close to a church.
Early visits made me fear that Casella believed Ralph Lauren shoppers wanted WASP-y Italian. Bass acqua pazza was “good for a diet but not much else,” a friend grumbled. Couscous seafood in a tagine seemed tapered to convalescent taste.
Even then, hints of glory emerged, like a heart-stoppingly rich, sauteed chicken liver on Tuscan toast. Now, Casella’s conviction is back.
It surged through savarin del parmacotto, a $23 starter. Risotto boiled and baked to a nubbly consistency is inserted into a doughnut-shape skin of cooked prosciutto so membrane-thin, it’s barely perceptible. The doughnut hole is filled with rich tomato sauce and tiny meatballs — a composition at once rustic and elegant.
The menu breaks no new ground but works the known earth/territory well. Acqua pazza came alive with John Dory and light broth humming a ginger-and-thyme tune. Squid ink risotto tasted as sensuous as the plump specimen looked amid a sea of seppia-blackened Carnaroli rice.
There are even a few bargains. A $17 antipasto, sgombro (mackerel), turned out to be nearly secondi-size, the fish in deep-green dandelion puree and chickpeas. Orecchiette, sausage and broccoli rabe ($21) sounded plain-vanilla predictable, yet was so fervently pulled together it seemed a revelation.
Artfully tweaked traditional desserts, including gianduja and panna cotta, were swell. Rum raisin gelato might be the best in my lifetime of rum raisin-wrangling.
Even so, Salumeria II has kinks in its system. Waiters talk too much: Just take our order, please. And encountering a scissors-sharp, half-inch-long rosemary sprig inside an innocent pork-and-beef raviolo made me call for the boss.
An alarmed-sounding Casella apologized: “That’s not supposed to be in there.” He headed for the kitchen where we imagined a cook being put through the mandoline.
Salumeria is a good Italian restaurant. It ought to be great. Keep reminding your team, Cesare, they’re cooking not for Madison Avenue — but for Manhattan.