Food & Drink

Take ‘Gravy’ train to Brooklyn

The attractive bar at Red Gravy in Brooklyn also draws in diners, not just drinkers.

The attractive bar at Red Gravy in Brooklyn also draws in diners, not just drinkers. (Jemal Countess (2))

Is the pasta at Brooklyn kitchen god Saul Bolton’s new trattoria Red Gravy made in-house? “The bulk of it is extruded right here,” the waiter answered proudly.

Well, extrude this. But no new 21st-century Brooklyn restaurant, not even one as enjoyable as Red Gravy, would be fun without its little shticks and pretensions.

Among them: no reservations taken for parties smaller than six, and “pickles” that are actually tiny vegetables so vinegary they all taste alike. Worse, the signature “red gravy” is offered only on Sunday, as if to marginalize it from presumably more authentic offerings. My appetite is for the sauce, not for irony.

All’s forgiven, though. I wanted to love this place on the Brooklyn Heights-Cobble Hill border before I even set foot inside. Red gravy was the sustaining substance of my Brooklyn childhood and remains an enduring pleasure of life.

Chef/owner Bolton’s first restaurant, Saul, truly first put the “new” Brooklyn eating scene on the map. A Michelin star on Smith Street! Go, Saul! Now, make Italian heaven on Atlantic Avenue!

And he and chef de cuisine Ayesha J. Nurdjaja pull it off. Of course, you can’t just open a joint and say “Good Italian food” — you bifurcate the menu into “southern Italian” (most dishes) and “Italian-American” (rotating piatto del giorno). But “red sauce” distinctions can be mighty gray, so I’d take them with a grain of Trapani salt.

Red Gravy is spacious by local standards, framed mostly in Brooklyn generic brick and timber and almost decorated — thanks to some flocked wallpaper and vintage photos. A red, triple-globe tap head on the bar — “That’s our Ferrari” — lends the only drop of color.

Just when you’ve had it with tables too dark to see much, along come the meatballs and polenta: veal, pork and beef alloyed seamlessly to egg, fennel and tomato sauce in which they’re roasted and braised. Supple and moist on the tongue, lent crackle by bread crumbs, they whip Manhattan’s best in this golden age of meatballs.

Exacting kitchen discipline makes old favorites seem rustic and rugged. They’re lushly textured and complexioned with different herbs and accents than in more literal Italian preparations.

Pasta ($15 to $27) reflects the liberating spirit of two other fine New York Italian chefs, Michael White (Marea) and Missy Robbins (of A Voce, where Nurdjaja previously worked). Calamarata are semolina rings shaped like calamari — ideal for bearing sauce and traditionally Neapolitan. But they’re blackened Sicilian-style in squid ink and merrily tossed with spicy Nduja sausage, shrimp, pork fat, mint and bergamot — an exuberant meld of southern Italian, North African and North Brooklyn influences.

Monday night’s pasta al forno, small and circular anelletti, were baked to a soul-satisfying turn beneath a crackling crust with tomato sauce, garlic, basil, mozzarella and Grana Padano cheese and sparked with a fearless burst of chili flakes. I’m not sure what’s any kind of Italian about grilled skirt steak, even when it’s garlic- and rosemarymarinated, but ours was merely magnificent.

The kitchen’s prone to timing blunders, though, especially after long waits for entrees ($24 to $28) on busy nights. Succulent-looking rabbit proved to be dry and dull. Overgrilling also sapped a huge Berkshire pork chop of moisture at the same meal. Another night, the cut arrived just right, pink in the center and fully revealing brined and marinated essences of herbs and orange zest.

Of course it all came down to the Sunday gravy — a $45 mini-splurge starting with cheesy arancini and proceeding to crisp tricolore salad fortified with cippolini onions, apples and walnuts.

The finale took 20 minutes to arrive after the salad, but it was worth the wait. Spoonably thick tomato sauce — layered with fennel, wine, pork skin and garlic — ravished paccheri tubular pasta and, on a separate plate, an extravagance of mammal protein: lamb ribs (fatty enough), Calabrian pork sausage (spicy) and short rib braciole (drinkably supple), plus one glorious meatball.

I’ve eaten this dish, or something close to it, all my life, from Rao’s to Rome, but never one this good. Not only love, but time-intensive curing and braising — and judicious application of pepper, coriander, lardo, egg, mint, parsley and chili — made it worthy of its title role.

Desserts ($8 to $9) are slightly edgy. Leave the cannoli, which is disastrously deconstructed. Take the goat cheesecake wed to soft Taggiasca olives and sour cherries.

Take no chances on Sunday gravy: Go early, because they sometimes run out. Seven days more are too many to wait.