Pasta, San Marzano, Herbs
by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
November 24, 2008
SFOGLIA
1402 Lexington Ave
@ 92nd St
New York, NY 10128
212-831-1402
A couple of weeks ago, my better half surprised me as we were on our way to the launch party of Steve Heller and Lita Talarico’s latest book, The Design Entrepreneur, by telling me that we had 8pm reservations at Sfoglia. Reservations at Sfoglia?! It was a miracle. Louise Fili, who designed Sfoglia’s logo, was at the party and mentioned that the restaurant had taken over the nail salon next door and expanded with a new pantry section to sell their products. I was even more excited.
Though I wrote a short review on Sfoglia last year, I must reiterate my thoughts from this most recent visit. Sfoglia is nothing short of lovely. At lunch, it’s not as difficult to get a seat, but dinner reservations are hard to come by mainly because Sfoglia’s so small. The atmosphere, which is rustic and dark, is not as quirky as , another rustic Italian favorite of mine. And even though they were playing lounge music in the background, it was soothing, not the dance club beats that lead to indigestion. Everything at this quaint restaurant just feels right.
The food is excellent, but one item that needs to be highlighted is actually the homemade bread. Crunchy on the outside and fluffy within, it’s a real treat to start the meal. And though I don’t want to spoil the story, the perfect ending is their homemade bread pudding.
After the homemade bread, our meal began with the five cheese arancini. These decadent rice balls, accompanied by a nice glass of wine, are a good way to ease into the meal. We proceeded to share half portions of two pastas: the potato and chestnut gnocchi with porcini, béchamel and sage; and spaghetti with San Marzano tomatoes and herbs. The gnocchi was delicious, but extremely rich. Spaghetti with tomato sauce may be the most basic pasta, but it is the one I always choose because, ironically, truly good tomato sauce is hard to come by. And, though at Sfoglia, it’s your choice of any pasta to go with this sauce, spaghetti happens to be my favorite. The sauce lets the pure freshness of the San Marzano speak for itself with a little accent of basil. It was so amazing that even after I was done with the pasta and there was a last dab of tomato sauce that I planned to clean up with a piece of bread, when a bus boy asked if he could clear the plate, I nearly leapt across the table to save it. But I think my expression scared him enough that he politely left the plate and our table.
We also shared a simple mixed salad lightly dressed with lemon, salt and pepper, and the creamed corn with mascarpone and black pepper taralli, a crunchy pretzel-like dough. Like I said, everything was a delight.
Given the richness of the meal, we didn’t need dessert, but it was impossible to say no to the bread pudding with currants and rum. Dear god!
After dinner, we were in such good spirits that we walked a good fifteen blocks downtown before hailing a cab. No wonder it’s so hard to get a seat at Sfoglia; it’s simply magical!
