August 16, 1971 |
Vintage Insatiable
Gluttony With Grandeur
Is Nicola Paone’s, a 34th Street Shangri-la, sealed off from the virulent hospitality and apathy of Manhattan? How else explain the pride and snap, the dignity and near-excessive ooze of hospitality? Padrone Nicola Paone is practically a parody of himself – well, a bit of a ham, then, the incurable performer (famed as a guitarist abroad) who sweeps his own cement turf each morning and has recently gone on a feverish baking spree, constructing elaborate pastries that are toted about the room by a trio of waiters out of a Sigmund Romberg operetta.
It is Nicola who hand-letters the plywood menus (he hasn’t had time to redo them lately, so prices are modestly stable). His fantasy inspired the cave-like arches, the illuminated stained glass, faux barrelheads and the rigid rules of sartorial propriety. Panted females were sternly barred until just recently. Paone still bars hot pants. Brown wrap-around paper skirts are supplied to hide offending flesh.
In the full flush of such feverish conservatism, it is no surprise to find William Buckley gracing the corner table – though it’s taxing to imagine the town’s bitingest gadfly ordering a “Boom Boom” or nibbling a “Nightgown.” For such is the glossology of innocence here. Still, any reasonably integrated sophisticate should be able to handle the primitivism. And, by any name, Boom Boom is a handsome invention; shirt-board-thin cutlets of fragile veal wrapped around bits of prosciutto, mushroom and parsley, sautéed in white wine and smothered with thin-sliced mushroom. Nightgown is the same tender, thin veal padded with prosciutto and mozzarella, rolled and baked, then wrapped in eggplant with a measure of tomato sauce and cheese-crowned. Chicken Baci Baci is a galantine – a whole chicken, boned, studded with cubed chicken breast, minced veal and prosciutto, sliced and served hot in a white wine sauce or cold in vinaigrette. Trittone is giant shrimp split, pounded thin, stuffed with a forcemeat of sole, shrimp and spinach and topped with a cheese-spiked béchamel. Braciolette are thin strips of tenderest beef filet, sprinkled with breadcrumbs in a white wine sauce. Only Primavera was disappointing. Dry, overcooked chicken livers are wrapped in an unpleasantly salty prosciutto bunting with burnt black bay leaf flags, ungraced by canned peas. Entrées, mostly $7 at dinner, $4.75 and up at lunch, come with salad or spaghetti.
An order of cold antipasto to share was served with the wisdom of King Solomon, each item precisely halved: a bit of roasted pepper, zucchini, mushroom, each with a different minced stuffing, caponata and some good charcuterie. The hot antipasto is a thoughtful heterogeneity of eggplant, clam, tiny crumbed shrimp, mushroom, each individually enhanced.
The pastas are homemade, $3.75 and up at dinner, slightly less at lunch. Serenata in Minore is a rendition of broad tender noodles layered with creamy ricotta, then baked and glazed… a bland opulence to be doused with Parmesan and flurries of fresh cracked pepper. Minced chicken-beef-and-spinach-filled cannelloni are an exaltation of butter, cheese, and cream. And the fettuccine swims in a silky cholesterol bath.
Desserts are his own liqueur-soused, cream-filled, whipped-cream-slathered, chocolate-flecked creations, lathered with glazed fresh fruit… uninhibited confectionery. Neapolitan espresso is served in sugar-rimmed glasses. The service echoes Nicola’s pride and uncorrupted hospitality. Lingering later over lunch, there is not a single hint that the welcome has expired. Behind us the staff assembles for lunch, and when the waiter emerges it is only to apologize for the noise and laughter. “We are Italians,” he explains. “We cannot be still.”
207 East 54th Street. 212 889 3239
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“Don’t you Leave New York Without Eating at Mamma Leone’s.” This imperious command is lettered on a large sign facing Columbus Circle. And delegates to the Chicken Pluckers’ Biennial Exposition at the Coliseum may imagine that the occasional flutter of red, green and white is a celebration of the Mamma. But what chicken plucker would dare leave New York without sampling the ritual paralyzing plenty of Mamma’s legendary table?
Mamma Leone’s is like most adolescent afflictions. We outgrow them. And we nouveau worldies – sturdy Manhatttan transplants from the boondocks – sneer at the hinterlanders flocking to the pink stucco house on West 48th Street.
It’s our loss. Leone’s is the town’s most underrated restaurant.
By the square inch of marble, grotto and crepe paper alone, Mamma Leone’s is some spicy carnevale, a Disneyland of omnivorous deglutition. No effete subtleties here. This is a someplace. This is the three-ring happening, with colored lights, paper rosettes, bubbling fountains, two tons of Carrara marble depicting “Flight from Pompeii,” subterranean wine cellars blasted out of bedrock, more heroic statuary per cubic foot that is found in the front 40 at Forest Lawn, including Abraham Lincoln blessing a kneeling half-clothed black, all the first-string philosophers from the scapulae up, and portraits of the “Twin Saints of Leone’s,” Mamma and Dwight David Eisenhower.
Honeymooners, sweet primitives from the outer boroughs, trustful turisti, priests, military cadets, toddlers in elastic didies and fecund families unto the second and third generation have rewarded Leone’s adoptive corporate parent, Restaurant Associates, with a goldmine. Even in these arid times, Leone’s sill feeds some 16,000 people a week and grosses nearly $4.5 million, RA executives claim.
Brisk and mostly gentle service helps. Once the staff was mostly kin. Caruso came. And W.C. Fields. Will Rogers read his newspaper over his roast spring chicken. Harry Truman was served steak à la Eisenhower. Now among the bored and bemused paisano, there is Maurice, our waiter, a motherly black who solemnly explains the intricacies of the giant menu. “I don’t want you to watch my face,” he says. “Watch the menu as I explain.” And then, “Whatever you’ve got in mind, just holler, ‘Maurice.’ I’ll make it right.” His Italian is precise, careful… bold and mispronounced. He is almost scholarly as he transcribes our drink order, inquiring politely, without the tiniest crack of smile, “And what is a Virgin Mary, if I may ask?”
Dip into the harvest now. “I’ll give people plenty,” Mamma Leone promised. And this is the one restaurant in town that honors all its promises. There is a giant wedge of Swiss cheese on the table and a great bowl of fresh vegetables - whole tomatoes, celery, olive… suddenly a shiny green pepper seems irresistible. The $7.50 dinner advances with its heaviest ammunition: the famous antipasto supreme – stuffed clam (a nondescript feature that tastes like canned salmon), meat-stuffed tomato, melon wrapped in prosciutto, mortadella furled around a breadstick, salami, homemade eggplant caponata, vegetables in vinaigrette, a crude veal and onion salad, shrimp in Leone’s sweet pink mayonnaise sauce.
For one extraordinary, electric moment at a recent dinner, I found myself succumbing to the seduction. The antipasto was as glorious as remembered… a touched-by-the-human-hands feat, not out-of-the-can delicacies as so often encountered elsewhere. The pastas had that fresh homemade texture… the tomato sauces were somewhat bland, but the endearing lumps of gnocchi were properly lethal in their garlicky pesto bath.
All this is calculated to numb you to the entrees, which are often less than glorious… but this night the osso buco was quite respectable, as good as any I’d tasted in a recent osso buco binge through some of Manhattan’s most expensive Italian restaurants. Not a perfectly adorned knuckle, true. No sign of grated lemon peel or that last minute confetti of minced parsley and garlic… but good enough. And following the predictable pedestrian desserts – with slightly-better-than-usual tortoni – there were bugie, the crisp sugared pastry knots that precede espresso in lemon-and-sugar-frosted glasses.
A second dinner refocused on reality. This time the antipasto was considerably less glorious – our waiter’s apathy, perhaps, or an unexpected depletion of supplies. The bass was slightly undercooked and muddy. The saltimbocca proved to be a large sandwich of veal, tasty but tough, with an elusive scrim of cheese and prosciutto hidden inside. Veal rolls were dry and tough. The polenta was a sorry globular disgrace. And Mamma’s whole-stuffed roast chicken with its canned-gravy taste was decidedly abused en route. Even so, the spell of plenty persists. Less demanding palates accustomed to far scruffier victuals elsewhere may not notice an absence of white truffles or a resistance of veal.
Mamma never promised serious gastronomic indulgence. And there are bravos to be said for cheerful gluttony and near-stupification amidst the plaster nymphs.