Restaurant Review: Borgo is worth the trip to Manhattan

If you’re at the bar, or in the main dining room directly beyond it, you might miss the wood-burning oven in the kitchen. It is used to cook, among other things, “focaccia borgo”, which is not the noble champagne slab you might imagine, but a humble disc of flatbread covered in bronze pimples which, like an Italian quesadilla, hides a layer of nutty, melting nuts. Robiola and Fontina cheese. Oven smoke wafts from the blazing orange flesh of sweet, baby beets piled high in a semi-salad over a hit of garlicky mashed potatoes. Its heat caresses a skewer of marshmallow-soft veal bread that glistens beneath a gooey icing. It peels the branzino skin whole, and serves it with the bones removed but the head still intact, alongside a pile of juicy Sicilian greens with sweet onions and pine nuts scented with the feric kiss of saffron.

None of this is very groundbreaking, but I don’t think it’s intended to be. Tarlow and his chef, Jordan Frosolone, seem to focus instead on precision, the food exciting not for its novelty but for its proximity to perfection. Chicken liver mousse, another Tarlow classic (his restaurants were instrumental in bringing the dish back from gourmet Siberia), is here lustfully spread on flame-darkened toast and garnished with jam-packed slices of fig. Order it alongside a wood-fired, golden-crusted half-chicken – and if it weren’t for the quiet sophistication of the room around you – you might as well be in the twilight back room of Marlow & Sons circa two thousand oh-something, heated discussion with your companion if this is Narciso Rodriguez Right on the next table. Garnish of radishes and turnips Bagna kudaserved not in the familiar way, like a sausage with a dip, but – surprisingly and delightfully – with tiny root vegetables halved and sliced ​​the size of a fingertip, served warm and rich in anchovies. Bagna kuda It was poured. I haven’t enjoyed a raw root vegetable appetizer much since NoMad Restaurant (RIP) blew up the whole appetizer game with a plate of radishes topped with split butter, like chocolate-covered strawberries.

There are a few pastas on the menu – fettuccine in rich guinea fowl, and lightly breaded cannelloni with braised beef – but, unlike other upscale Italian-themed restaurants, these feel more like artistic commitments than they do. Culinary masterpieces. Unusually for pasta, the portions in Borgo tend to be a bit large, especially given its strong flavours. The pile of delicately sealed ravioli filled with sunchokes and mushrooms is, upon first bite, a sensational explosion of fungal umami, but by the time it got to the bottom of the plate, it felt like the point had been somewhat overstated. Desserts, overseen by pastry chef Adam Marca, are simple and elegant: a walnut spread on an affogato, with espresso poured into a smooth pillow of pistachio gelato; A bittersweet slice of Sacher tart (Tarlow’s grandfather from Vienna), dressed in sweetened apricot gems.

The room, like the dining, is sophisticated without trying too hard. It’s decorated in shades of wood and white, with gently curved ceilings (a little cave-like, a little nautical) and walls filled with interesting, mismatched art pieces. When I asked the server about one painting I particularly liked—Cézanne’s Fruit—Tarlo, who had been making his rounds, appeared at the table to proudly tell us that his daughter had painted it, and that it hung directly on the other side of the wall, back to back, from an abstract work he had done. Tarlow himself. A double-sided fireplace connects the two dining rooms, a relic from the Italian restaurant that once occupied the space. (One server told me they haven’t figured out how to light it yet without overheating the place or polluting the air with smog.) The mood and menu evoke not only Tarlow’s own places, but a certain kind of warmth. , a sophisticated, luxurious but not fussy Italian restaurant in a slightly earlier Manhattan era: perhaps the blazing fire at Beppe’s, or the intimate privacy of Upper West Side’s Cesca. Tablecloths, nice selection of cheeses, a bit of luxury, never overbearing. Is it too early to be nostalgic for twenty years ago? Maybe I’ve grown up too. Maybe Manhattan is worth a second look. ♦