the strong buzz, by andrea strong

“Bocca Lupo”

December 18, 2006

MY DINNER AT BOCCA LUPO
Two or three times a year, a group of ten or so hopeful food writers sign up for a class at Mediabistro.com called Basic Training for Food Writers. It is a class that I started about three years ago to help people transition into a new careers as food writers. It’s pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about food writing but were afraid to ask. Fascinating stuff. I give you the all tools you will need to become a food writer (other than a bank account full of cash, which would be a nice perk). We learn where to get ideas, how to pitch, how to accept rejection gracefully (see also, how not to throw yourself in front of a bus after three months straight of rejected pitches), how to write a food feature, and what makes a great restaurant review. For two months, we hang out together once a week from 7-10pm and talk food, words, restaurants, critics, blogs, chefs, ideas, and in the middle somewhere, life in general. And at the end of that two-month period, we sit down and eat dinner together. We try to pick a place that is easy for a large group and that won’t break the bank. This year’s choice was Bocca Lupo. It was recommended by one of my students, Christina, who works at MOMA during the day and who wrote a great essay about how she learned to love her boyfriend (now husband) despite his addition to his Fry Baby. She’d also written about Bocca Lupo for class and when she mentioned that Kenny Tufo (Maremma) had taken over the kitchen in September, I was on board too.

Bocca Lupo is an inviting, casual neighborhood enotecca with high and wide windowpane walls, dark wood accents, and soft low lighting located at the corner of Warren and Henry Streets. The restaurant, often crowded with neighbors, kids, and couples, punctuates a charmingly picturesque block of Warren Street, lined with single-family brownstones with wide stone stoops ribboned with boughs of holly, and twinkling lights. It’s the sort of street that makes you think Jimmy Stewart will come running down the block promising to lasso you the moon.

We settled in at a large long rectangular table and looked over the wine list, and found not one bottle priced over $40. Dan, a concert pianist who once performed for Annie Lebowitz and Susan Sontag, who is also an avid home cook and a paralegal for a big bank, was in charge of wine. He picked out a terrific Primitivo for $33. We doubled up on that one. Since there were seven of us, we pretty did that for the entire menu, which offers an ‘inotecca-like selection of crowd-pleasing antipasti and salads, bruschetta, panini and daily pasta specials.

We started with a pair of oversized platters of Italian meats ($12) and cheeses ($11) garnished with apples, nuts and slices of crusty country bread. Perfect fuel for contemplating our dinner order, which we decided must include several orders of the veal and porcini meatballs. I would have gone for an order of my very own, but I didn’t want to appear piggish or rude (even though I can be both when it comes to meatballs). Tufo’s meatballs ($11) are petite in stature, more like the size of Spain’s albondigas, and they are remarkably tender and light thanks to a dose of ricotta; grana padano, and Pecorino cheese give them a jolt of flavor. They are seared off and doused in sweet and fresh tomato sauce and piled onto a bread platform, not unlike an open-faced mini-meatball hero. Don’t leave that tomato-sauce-soaked bread behind. It’s a diamond in the rough.

Roasted artichokes ($8) come with a lemony aioli dotted with toasted hazelnuts, a beautiful combination that plays textures and flavors off eachother: the earthy nuttiness loves the slightly acidic bite of the ‘chokes. A lovely mound of sharp and spicy baby arugula leaves ($7) are showered with bits of gorgonzola and toasted spiced walnuts. Kate, who works in cookbook publishing, made the excellent call of ordering the marinated white anchovies ($7). The little silver fish are clean, bright and pickled lightly, like herring, in a shaved fennel and dill salad. These also begged for a double order for the table and one more for just me.

But some dishes were more miss than hit. A bruschetta topped with roasted eggplant puree and ricotta salata ($2.50) could have used better seasoning, and a tramezzini—think Italian tea sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off—of mortadella, pickled sweet onion and Pecorino ($7) was forgettable. But the bruschetta piled with sausage, fennel and caramelized cipollini onions ($2.50) was amazing, and the panini were possibly the best I have had. I am not sure what they do them, but the bread is not smashed down to thin sheets of paper. The sandwiches are toasty and hot, and marked on the grill, and the bread (from Il Forno in the Bronx) stays full and fluffy, which makes them two-handers, stuffed 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 print, and know that I had a little something to do with that. If not, at least we’ll always have that sausage panini.

Bocca Lupo is located at 391 Henry Street, corner of Warren, 718-243-2522.

Andrea Strong