Fried Calamari

by Mort Hochstein
January 18, 2007

DESTINO
891 1st Ave
@ 50th St
New York, NY 10022
212-751-0700

Destino fits the ideal for a certain type of home-style Italian restaurant. It would be perfectly at home in Little Italy. But when you move uptown where the big boys — think San Domenico, Da Antonio, and Grifone — play, you have to be more than capable.

Celebrity owner Justin Timberlake, veteran operator Eytan Sugarman and chef Mario Curko, late of Rao’s, the uptown hangout where hardly anyone can get in, give Destino the kind of gloss it may need to succeed. Its location on First Avenue at 50th Street, a few blocks up from the United Nations and little else, is both good and bad. Good because Destino is one of very few restaurants in that lightly-traveled area, and bad because it is so off the regular midtown track that it has to become a destination. In Michelin terms, it has to be worth a detour and that’s unlikely here.

It comes down to being a local Italian restaurant, a bit pricey, but hardly expensive enough to scare off the well-heeled residents of its Turtle Bay neighborhood, many of whom already appeared to be regulars on my visit close to a year after its opening in February 2006. The room was well filled and the folks around me seemed contented.

Forgive me, but I wasn’t. Chef Curko’s southern Italian menu is full of all the red-sauce dishes we’ve known since the days of checkered red tablecloths, dripping candles and fiaschi-cradled Chianti. I could have found the same menu with its veal Marsala, chicken cacciatore, red snapper Livornese and sautéed scampi, all at around $25 and more, on a half dozen side streets in the Village, with the same ambience and for less money. The folks at Rao’s, chef Curko’s home for a whole decade, did me a favor by barring the doors.

The wine list is a disaster. In the champagne category, home to the same familiar names, the standard brands you find in less pretentious, less well-funded restaurants and on many store shelves, there is no Italian bubbly, other than a Santa Margherita prosecco. Where are the Ca’ del Bosco, Bellavista and Ferrari sparklers, which stand proudly with champagne on better Italian lists. Where is the pride in regional wines from Italy?

The still-wine lineup is slightly more imaginative, but hardly venturesome as you might expect of a quality restaurant, and it is overpriced. But then, maybe the good burghers of the neighborhood don’t care. I asked a well-fed, formally-dressed gentleman at an adjoining table what he was drinking and he responded, “It’s a red.” The most Italian power on that wine list arrives at dessert time, when diners can finish off with old favorites like Moscato d’Asti, Limoncello, Orangecello and Vin Santo.

All that said, Curko does put out good food with fresh ingredients, and an occasional innovative dish, We enjoyed his fried calamari salad with toasted walnuts and an apple balsamic dressing and roasted lamb risotto accompanied by shitake mushrooms, carrots, sun-dried cranberries and green apple slices. The meatballs, a Curko specialty, are hardly unique, but they’re good, and the food comes out hot. There’s an occasional bit of flare on that menu, but most of it is tried, true and tired. Ambience, service and familiarity are the planks here and they may be all that its unquestioning clientele want and deserve.

Also in Italian, Midtown East, Seafood, Squid