Stephen Kalt’s Atlantic City Gamble

        In Atlantic City, consulting after quitting Corso at Wynn resort in Las Vegas, ex-New York chef Stephen Kalt has consulted himself into Borgata Casino in Atlantic City with Fornelletto, a 220 seat enoteca and osteria set to open next Saturday (June 27). Roma, he says, will be a little sister pizzeria café with sandwiches, antipasti and wines by the glass.

        Kalt, who prepped with Daniel Boulud and Sootha Khunn at the original Le Cirque on 65^th Street and ran the kitchen at Rakel downtown after Thomas Keller defected to the west coast, opened Spartina – one of my favorite hangouts – with Cindy Smith in 1994 in Tribeca, before expansion uptown did them in a few years later. I also loved Corso with its too many irresistible menu offerings – click here to read my New York magazine feature “Eating Las Vegas."

         Fornelletto will feature a mozzarella bar, Neopolitan-style pizzas, salumi from top-rated makers, and such Kalt signatures as Ligurian octopus salad with tonnato sauce, burrata with Sicilian fig and olive tapenade, warm San Marzano tomato bruschetta with poached egg and fried rabbit with chestnut honey mustard.  I have so far resisted the star chef sirens of Atlantic City but I don’t plan to resist Kalt’s bucatini with crab, sea asparagus and sea urchin butter. If only I could hitch a ride on Donald Trump's helicopter. 

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