THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Raffaele

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Raffaele Restaurant Review:

Raffaele has been one of those ever-packed Italian restaurants unfamiliar to those who use the New York guidebooks. The brilliant red walls and sprays of flowers make this an intimate and personalized style of trattoria. Nightly dinner suggestions might be a lavish antipasti platter of many wonders: asparagus all'Ischitana, a warm seafood salad with shrimp and calamari tossed with peas, tomato and white wine; grilled shiitakes with scallops, leeks, tomato, olive and lemon; and calamari stuffed with eggs, salami, parsley, raisins and pine nuts---a very Southern Italian dish, sparkling with flavor. For pasta you might go with the house-made tagliolini with meatballs stuffed with raisins, pine nuts, basil and mozzarella with a strained tomato sauce. Especially delicious is the spaghettini with langoustines dressed with garlic, olive oil, cherry tomatoes and parsley, the pasta perfectly al dente, the glossing of the sauce just right and the crustaceans sweet. The veal osso buco is a textbook version, not drowned in tomato sauce but instead enriched with long-braised celery, onion and carrots, served with saffron-scented risotto. The desserts are commendable; we recommend the pistachio cake. The wine list is extensive and fairly priced, mostly Italian, with some real gems.