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“'Cesca”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Italian	Upper West Side	Moderate	Good

m filled to the rim with hungry Upper West Siders—couples, families, flocks of friends. Décor aside, Garcia has also kept the format of Valenti’s menu at ‘Cesca the same—with dishes for the table to start, followed by antipasti, primi (pasta), secondi, daily specials and sides. There’s a familiarity here, but there’s also a voice all its own. The other night, when Jamie, Adrienne, Michelle and I had dinner, we had a meal that felt similar to Tom’s food–rustic, hearty, and bold—but with it’s own slowly emerging identity.

We started things off with a basket of Spicy Parmesan fritters ($9), a signature of Tom’s that Garcia’s has kept on the menu, and they are even better than they used to be—crispy, fat, and golden crusted studded with little smoky hunks of ham cheese filled with cheese that stretches into a deep U-shaped smile as you pull the fritter apart with your hands. Absolutely fabulous. Golf-ball sized arancini are now stuffed with rice and summer peas, instead of the former rice and ham, and have the right amount of crunch and a nice balance of rice, peas and cheese, though honestly, they don’t stand a chance against those fritters.

Garcia’s Zuppa del Giorno ($10) was delicate and light, made from sweet corn scraped fresh from the cob and pureed into a soup that is dressed with olive oil and bobbing with clams. I liked the soup—it was elegant if even too light, like summer spoken in a whisper. An escarole salad tossed with hazelnuts and red onion and sheep’s cheese ($12) presented a great assortment of flavors in contrast—nutty, sharp, sweet—but the dish was killed by an overload of salt. I am a huge fan of well-seasoned food but garde manger needs to lighten the hand on that salt. The whole orata, grilled and presented under a shower of sea beans and Meyer lemon ($33), was a gorgeous creature, with a charred skin revealing super moist flesh, but there was a discernable fishiness to it that was not altogether pleasant.

The orecchiette with house made pork sausage and bitter greens ($20) however, was a star—perfectly cooked ear-shaped pasta getting busy with load of crumbled pork that was fired up by the bitter greens. We returned a spotless bowl. A plate of braised lamb risotto ($P/A) with mint was earthy and nutty (and giant in portion size) though the flavors could have been more precis ... [more, click below]

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Posted: August 28, 2006

Other restaurants in Upper West Side :
+ 'Cesca   + Asiate   + Blue Hill Stone Barns   + Per Se   + The Neptune Room   + Spigolo   + Telepan   + Aix Brasserie   + 'Cesca   + Bar Boulud   + Dovetail   + BarBao   + Dinosaur Bar-be-Que   + Kefi   + Bar Luna   + Ed's Chowder House   + Red Rooster, by Rachel Barbarotta   + Loi by Dara Pollak   

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