Lately, we've seen a spate of restaurants seeking to imitate Roman trattorias. Obika re-created a famous mozzarella-themed wine bar in the soaring lobby of Midtown's IBM building, while Quinto Quarto built out a small storefront in the West Village, getting the rustic look just right and offering authentic Roman pastas. Now along comes Trattoria Cinque ("Bistro Five"), invading a rambling space on Tribeca's Greenwich Street. The 250-seat restaurant features two small outdoor seating areas, a front-of-the-house dining room, a barroom with seating on stools and at tables, a humongous dining room that parallels the bar, and a pair of glassed-in private dining rooms, one at the rear of the main floor, the other downstairs with the bathrooms. As the website brags: "The dining room mimics a 1960s trattoria"—though "mimic" is a loaded word, isn't it?
"This lighting is great, if only the bulbs were aimed better," said a friend who works as a lighting designer. Indeed, a wealth of overhead fixtures and spots that stream upward through red bottles of Campari set the tone for the main room, which is filled with long blond-wood tables surrounded by red chairs, as if waiting for the hordes to arrive. Trattoria Cinque is clearly a project that hit the drawing boards before the economic downturn, when eager restaurateurs decided that bigger was better when it came to minting money. The businessman in this case is Russell Bellanca, who operates two Alfredo of Rome restaurants, one in Rome and the other in Rockefeller Center. Both are aimed at tourists and reportedly not very good.
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