Beef is a relative rarity in Italy. Though steaks made from the famous Chianina cattle are a passion in Tuscany, and carpaccio and tagliata are popular in Piedmont, pork is overwhelmingly the favorite flesh throughout the boot-shaped peninsula. Yet Manzo ("beef" in Italian) has chosen to obsess over beef, making it one of New York's most unusual Italian eateries. But while the food at the new Batali/Bastianich restaurant in the Eataly shopping complex will probably thrill you, the premises definitely won't.
The first thing you'll come across as you approach the greeter's podium is a long bar pointing toward the fish counter opposite the restaurant. The rest is a boxy room barely walled off from the complex, with super-graphic posters showing row upon row of green terraced fields and, high up, a lofty Lidia Bastianich flogging her cooking classes. Attack of the 50-Foot Woman! In between, find a vista that looks toward Eataly's rotisserie station, where knots of shoppers stare into the restaurant, their mouths agape. It's impossible to sit in Manzo and not feel like you're part of a diorama at the Natural History Museum.
Read more at http://www.villagevoice.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment