The Spirit of Southern Italy
Italian Tapas Abound at Bar Stuzzichini
by John Mariani

Tables at Bar Stuzzichini

Bar Stuzzichini, in the Flatiron District, focuses on its namesake appetizers, as well it should, because there's plenty to love here among the categories of Crostini, Formaggi, Verdure, Pesce, Fritti, and Salumi. The best way to approach this bounty is to order the "Stuzzichini Misti," a choice of five items, $24 for two people, $46 for four, and those are very good deals indeed. You can choose whatever you like, and since the appetizers run $3-$12, you'll eat well and cheaply.

I loved the stuffed eggplant and the deliciously addictive chickpea fritters, as well as the lightly smoky scamorza cheese to eat with good country bread, and the juicy, flavorful polpette meatballs. Among the salumi, you may choose among sweet cacciatorini sausage, spicy soppressate, Prosciutto di Parma, or pizza rustica.

Depending on how hungry you are you might want to order just one more course, or share a pasta and a main course, and with most items under $23 on the menu, you can afford to be a little profligate. Chef Paul DeBari, whose ancestors came from Rome, Naples, and Foggia, worked at the Austrian restaurant Wallsé before creating this Southern Italian menu, and the best of it approaches the best I've had in those Southern regions where good taste takes precedence over flair and composition.

Of the pasta dishes we tried, one was outstanding–the rigatoni with oxtail ragù–the other somewhat flavorless, because the promised pistachios and lemon combined with tagliolini in a creamy, Alfredo-like sauce didn't come through.

Maybe they were saving all the lemon for the best of our main courses–a fabulously crispy lemon-laced chicken. Also very good was braised rabbit Bari style, and a short rib braciole, but wholly absorbed with the braising liquids, tomato, onion, and spices. Swordfish is so often not as fresh as it should be in restaurants, and the example here, done alla puttanesca with cherry tomatoes, garlic, capers, and olives, was somewhat fishy smelling and lacked the right texture swordfish uniquely has when it's at its best.

Carolyn Renny, who currently works on the "Martha Stewart Show," does some yummy pastries, also available at the bar late at night when you may need a sugar rush and a good, strong espresso.
  
The 100+ winelist is appropriately all Italian, with a focus on the wines of the South, from Abruzzo to Sicily. The restaurant puts "Enoteca" in its logo to indicate this is a place to drop by for some wine by the glass, served in quartinos.

The long dining area and front bar has an authentically rustic atmosphere, with expanses of polished mahogany, big wagon wheel-like chandeliers, photographs of Naples by Salvatore Mancini, and mosaic floors. Banquettes are red or striped, tables, sad to say, are naked, which doesn't help a truly ear-shattering decibel level that keeps Bar Stuzzichini from being more enjoyable than it is. Conversation becomes a shouting match here.

That said, if you can somehow manage to get a table a little out of the noise corridor, you will be as close to a true sense of the kind of metropolitan cafés, bacari, enotecas, and trattorias that enliven the spirit of the Italian South, with plenty of good wine and laughter to go along with it.

John Mariani is well known for his frank and poignant writing in Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and co-author, with his wife, of the Italian-American Cookbook.