Tom Douglas

Eating New York, Maialino/ by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor

Our next NYC eating adventure was at Danny Meyer’s newest joint, Maialino, a “Roman Trattoria” which is located in the Gramercy Park Hotel.  Meyer is one of New York’s superstar restaurateurs.  His other restaurants include Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, Tabla, The Modern, Shake Shack, and more.

Maialino turned out to be a good choice for brunch with friends… in fact, a renunion of five of the seven friends who shared a house together in Florence.  We started things on a convivial note with a couple bottles of Prosecco and a lip smacking Bloody Mary for Frank.  Frank liked the Bloody Mary so much, he asked the bartender what was in it and was given a list including Belvedere Vodka, toasted cumin, cardamom, and celery seed.   I think it was the perfect amount of toasted cumin that really made this Bloody Mary great!

What we liked best: silky textured smoked swordfish with pickled onions, a nice plate of mixed salumi, baked eggs in spicy tomato sauce with guanciale (this was a real stand-out and made all of us at the table question why we weren’t baking eggs at home).  I also enjoyed my carbonara with black pepper, guanciale, and egg.  (I went on a pasta tear through New York; since Frank generally avoids carbs at home- I am starved for pasta!)

But the winning item on the table was a humble looking plate of ricotta pancakes: fluffy, delicate, tender…. pancakes from heaven.  They came with a pitcher of real Vermont maple syrup. (Our waiter told us his friends make the syrup.)

We ended with Affogato, which is vanilla ice cream “drowned” in espresso, and a little glass of Vin Santo with biscotti- similar to what we enjoyed together all over Florence last Spring.

May 19th, 2010