The Four Horsemen Team Rides Again

"As at Four Horsemen, where an oeuf mayonnaise is zebra-striped with squid ink and humble beans are treated like precious gems, Curtola trusts his diners to venture beyond obvious crowd-pleasers. I was impressed to see how many tables around me had ordered the nervetti, a chilled salad of beef tendons, cut sliver-thin, with shaved white onions and pickled chive blossoms. To my palate, the dish isn't entirely successful-tendons are a textural ingredient more than a flavorful one, slippery and jiggly-wiggly,"

"The pleasures of chewy textures are on better display in a shallow bowl of trofie, teeny-tiny handmade pasta twists cooked to a lovely springiness. They're tossed in a shocking-green pesto, which is typically herbaceous and cheesy and has the unmistakable buttery-soft flavor armature of pounded pine nuts. Forget caviar, forget truffles: true luxury is sweet and resinous Italian pinoli, an increasingly precious crop that can run to more than a hundred dollars a kilo."

"raisins in an agrodolce that adheres a fried fillet of eel to a piece of crackly toast. It summons Sicily, but also the Apennines, and Venice, and a little bit of China, too, in the airy way the eel is fried. I was skeptical of the addition of unshelled mussels to a classic panzanella, then almost immediately conceded: against a juicy mess of tomatoes and vinegar and fried bread, the little tender blobs of meat nearly-but, crucially, don't quite-disappear, their toothsome softness almost mushroom-like."

Curtola's kitchen serves adventurous Italian-inspired plates that elevate humble ingredients through texture and rare components. Nervetti appears as a chilled salad of thinly sliced beef tendons with shaved white onions and pickled chive blossoms, emphasizing slippery, textural contrast rather than assertive flavor. Trofie are tiny handmade twists cooked springy and tossed in shocking-green pesto made with pounded pine nuts. Whole Italian pinoli pair with golden raisins in agrodolce to glaze fried eel on crackly toast. Unshelled mussels in a panzanella provide tender, almost mushroom-like bites among tomatoes, vinegar, and fried bread. The farfallone features giant bow-tie pasta in amber chile butter with smoky pancetta and breadcrumbs.

Read at The New Yorker