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“Bocca Lupo”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Italian	Brooklyn	Cheap Eats	Good

ed with impressively substantial fillings, nothing skimpy. What’s more, the kitchen slices them in four so that sharing is much more available than trying to wrestle a knife through the crusty bread yourself and squishing out the center’s fillings.

Our favorite was one stuffed with sweet sausage, broccoli rabe, mushrooms and a layer of gooey taleggio ($11), followed by the super smoky P.L.T. ($9) —crisped pancetta, lettuce and tomato, and the coppa, sopprassata, pickled red onion and fontina ($10), with such an ample dose of melting cheese that stretches from the sandwich to your mouth with every bite. There may not be any high-tech innovation happening with these sandwiches, but they are crafted from top-notch ingredients and handled with such care and are so good, that you will absolutely crave them the next day, and then some. (In fact, I am craving that sweet sausage one right now, a few days later.)
 
Tufo knows his pasta (he cooked with Cesare Casella), and he makes a different one daily. The pasta special that night was a bucatini puttanesca, a hollow spaghetti tossed with a smooth glossy tomato sauce heavy with fat briny green olives and tight salty capers. The flavors were bright and zesty, and the dish was priced right at $8. We discussed the origin of Puttanesca—form the word puttana, or whore in Italian. Lauren, who loves to cook and manages a local restaurant, offered that the dish was quick and easy, so the name made sense. The Food Lover’s Companion offers a slightly different explanation, writing that the “intense fragrance of the sauce was like a siren’s call to the men who visited such ‘ladies of pleasure’.” Whatever the etymology, we licked that plate clean.

For dessert, we shared a guilty pleasure—a panini filled up with warm sliced bananas and nutella, served with a generous dollop of freshly whipped sweet cream. And then we headed home, walking back down Warren Street towards the F Train on Smith Street and said goodbye, going our separate ways out into the world to eat and drink and perchance to share that experience with an audience of readers. I hope they make it. I feel so maternal with my kids, like they are my little ducks waddling off on their own for the first time. I hope that I’ve managed to teach them some decent lessons and skills, and that one day, I will open Time Out, the Times or Gourmet, see their names in pri ... [more, click below]

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Posted: December 18, 2006

Other restaurants in Brooklyn :
+ Chickenbone Cafe-- Closed   + Pier 116-- Closed   + Chestnut   + Lunch at Peter Luger's   + 360   + Palo Santo   + The Good Fork   + Porchetta-- Closed Now   + Bocca Lupo   + Flatbush Farm   + DuMont Burger   + Dressler   + Farm on Adderley   + The Grocery   + Saul   + Black Mountain Wine House   + The General Greene   + Char No. 4   + James   + Chestnut   + No. 7   + Vinegar Hill House   + Motorino   + Buttermilk Channel   + Buttermilk Channel   + Vutera   + Watty & Meg    + Prime Meats   + Aqualis Grill   + Jack the Horse Tavern   + Roman's   + Fatty 'Cue   + Thistle Hill Tavern   + Broken English   + Trix, by Dara Pollak   + An Ode to New Orleans in Williamsburg: Maison Premiere, By Dara Pollak   + Brooklyn Wok Shop by Dara Pollak   + Arthur on Smith   + La Vara   + Gran Electrica   + Pok Pok Ny   + Ganso    + Reynard   

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