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“Nizza”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Italian	Hell's Kitchen	Cheap Eats	Great

Most of you who read The Strong Buzz regularly know that I'm getting married in August and that the wildly lucky guy in question is a playwright. One of the perks of being engaged to a playwright (albeit one who is as in awe of Samuel Beckett as he is of Josh Beckett) is that we go see a lot of theater, which balances out nights spent at Professor Thom’s flanked by screaming sweaty men, pitchers of beer and trays of Nachos de Tomas in various states of coagulation. The joys of watching team sports are endless are they not? Anyway, in the past few months we’ve seen Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry, Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming which actually made the family in Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County seem pretty normal. Wow. And I thought my family was screwed up. We’re seeing Beckett’s Endgame and George Packer’s Betrayed, and we’re hoping to get to The Seafarer, The Adding Machine, and Patrick Stewart in Macbeth.

The only issue with going to the theater for me is where to eat. I can’t afford Esca every time, and while I like Toloache quite a bit, I’m often not in the mood for a three-course pre-fixe at 5:45pm. It seems the options in the theater district are always too expensive or just too much of a production and I’m always cramming in a meal when I’m not really hungry and that’s no fun. And then I discovered Nizza. And since then, quite frankly, we don’t eat anywhere else.

Nizza may be a place that many of you have heard of but shrugged off. It didn’t open with a frantic wave of posts on Eater or Grub Street, and that’s probably because it’s really just an unassuming modest slip of a restaurant and bar—a casual place that’s bathed in blond wood like some prototype for a wine bar from Ikea. But what it lacks in sizzle it makes up for in substance. There’s some serious talent in the kitchen and the food here has yet to be given the praise it deserves. That’s what I’m here to do.

The chef in question is none other than Andy D’Amico, an underrated talent who was most revered for his work at Sign of the Dove, and has since then been the chef of Marseille, and Nice Matin. He owns Nizza with his business partner and wine director Robert Guarino. The two conceived of Nizza—a restaurant that takes its name from the Italian word for Nice—as a place devoted to the coastal of Nice, Liguria, ... [more, click below]

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Posted: April 12, 2008

Other restaurants in Hell's Kitchen :
+ Nizza   + 5 Napkin Burger   + Danji   

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