Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Where Star Chefs Go Casual
172
Lupa
Batali Basic
New York, New York
There's nothing stuffy about Mario Batali or
his farmhouse-inspired Italian cooking.
Even his Michelin-starred flagships,
Babbo
(110 Waverly Place;
&
212/777-0303;
www.babbonyc.com) and
Del Posto
(85 Tenth Ave.;
&
212/497-8090
) are gra-
cious, warm places, despite decidedly Man-
hattan-level prices. And except for his
seafood trattoria
Esca
(402 W. 43rd St.;
&
212/564-7272
), most of his New York
City restaurant empire is scattered around
the Greenwich Village area, where the
atmosphere tends to be laid back and
relaxed.
Still, whenever you see the affable red-
haired Batali on television shows or in
magazine interviews—and it seems you're
always seeing him on TV or in maga-
zines—the food he's raving about is sim-
ple, hearty Italian trattoria food. So if you
can't get a reservation at Babbo (and often
you can't) and you don't care to spend
$300 on the wine-paired grand tasting
menu at Del Posto, you can still get close
to Batali's heart and soul at Lupa, in the
heart of Greenwich Village between
Bleecker and Houston streets. With its low
ceilings, bare wood tables, white globe
lights, and brick arches over the wine
racks, this cheery, sometimes even rau-
cous restaurant deftly captures the look of
a vintage Roman trattoria. The menu fol-
lows suit, with appetizers like baccala, or
tuna with cannellini beans; second courses
like tripe, ricotta gnocchi with sausage and
fennel, or
bucatini all' amatriciana;
and
entrees like saltimbocca, pork shoulder
with
treviso
and
aceto,
or
pollo alla dia-
vola.
Regular patrons develop special
favorites among the daily specials, like
Monday's rabbit sausage or Sunday's
bra-
ciola alla cacciatoria.
And it should come
as no surprise that the house-made cured
meats are particularly luscious, since Bata-
li's father, Armandino, runs Salumi, one of
the country's best
salumerias,
out in Seat-
tle (see ).
For what's supposed to be a low-key
neighborhood joint, Lupa can be awfully
hard to get into on weekend nights, but
with food this robust and satisfying, that
was probably inevitable. Try it out for
lunch, though, and you should have no
problem. The same goes for Mario's rustic
pizza restaurant,
OTTO Enoteca Pizzeria
(1 Fifth Ave.;
&
212/995-9559;
www.
ottopizzeria.com), a little farther north but
still in the Village. Despite the pizzeria tag,
The bar at Babbo, Mario Batali's Michelin-
starred flagship restaurant.
