Zucchero e Pomodori

I’m half-Sicilian, on my mother’s side, so I grew up eating an awful lot of Italian, down to the stereotypical pot of sauce (I refuse to call it gravy, ever) on the stove every weekend. So when Mom came to town for a long weekend, I knew she would want to cook, and I knew I didn’t want to let her. I’d rather take her out so we could enjoy the restaurants near home. Of course, we wound up eating at four different Italian places in four nights. Zucchero e Pomodori was the first, as it was very close — Ma doesn’t walk very well any more, and she didn’t want to trouble with a taxi. And as it turns out, the Feisty Foodie herself reviewed the same restaurant a while back.

Like any good Italian restaurant, we were brought sliced Italian bread before ordering. The crust took some work to chew through, but it was a little warm, and the insides were soft and surprisingly flavorful.

That there is roasted red peppers, drenched in olive oil, with some tomato. Simplicity wins! So tasty, and the sweetness of the red pepper played nicely with the tomato. We had to stop ourselves from eating the whole loaf of bread before the appetizers arrived.

To help enjoy the appetizers and entree to come, why not sip a lovely Montepulciano? There are several wines by the glass, alongside a very reasonably-priced list of full bottles, on offer.

Appetizer the first: the Antipasto Misto, a mix of three cured meats: sopressata, cappicola, and salami — with parmigiano reggiano and gorgonzola cheese, and olives. I’m a big fan of the meats on this plate, and apparently so is Ma, as we competed for a while until she remembered I am her favorite and subsequently started telling me to eat the rest. The cheeses were fine, but nothing special, and I wish the olives were pitted, because I never know what to do with the pits, so I just wind up not even bothering to eat them. Still, I did enjoy this immensely.

The Vongole Originata — baked clams with bread crumbs on top — arrived concurrently, and is one of Ma’s favorites. As she pointed out, it’s Clams Casino with an Italian name. I’m normally not much for clams, but these were well-prepared and not tough, though it took a little effort to extract them whole from their shells. The reward was a big lump of clam and savory breading, with of course olive oil. I surprised myself by eating half of them.

On to the entrees. Mom ordered the Tortellini Della Nonna, meat tortellini in a creamy, cheesy sauce, topped with a fistful of prosciutto. Mushrooms and peas were floating about in there as well. I only had a couple of bites, which at least proved Zucchero knows how to prepare pasta, and somehow managed to avail myself of much of the wonderfully salty prosciutto. Thanks, Ma!

I chose the Scallopine Saltimbocca. I like ordering veal in Italian restaurants because I generally won’t bother preparing it at home, and I’d guess I’d be worse at it than a restaurant. This veal, with prosciutto and mozzarella in a white wine sauce, was so flavorful, so dense without being tough to chew, and the layering worked well with each bite.

The cross section shows what my mouth was in for with each bite. I tried to keep the mozzarella and prosciutto in place for each piece, as the salt and cream and wine… just so good.

The sauteed spinach pile wasn’t overly wilted, and provided a pleasant bitterness to counteract the slight sweetness from the sauce. I was a fan.

We cleaned our plates, and sopped up the tasty sauce with the remainder of the bread. It was just too good to leave there!

While we decided against dessert (I had a plan to take Mom elsewhere), our waitress brought over a tray of biscotti to help us decide. Two of the biscotti mysteriously disappeared before I remembered to snap this picture…

Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend Zucchero e Pomodori. They’ve managed to survive on Second Avenue even as the businesses around them do not, and for good reason: the food is very good, reasonably priced — all the above with tax and a generous tip barely crested $100 — and is served by a waitstaff that somehow manages to dote on each table. While we walked over at 7:00 to a mostly-empty dining room, by the time we left almost every table was full.

Zucchero e Pomodori is one of the more positive restaurant experiences I’ve had in New York in quite some time. I won’t make the mistake of passing them over for so long again.