Grub Med
Grilled squid and beans, sprightly ceviche with octopus, sophisticated pastas, crusty salmon and chicken, mashed potatoes, garlic everywhere -- that’s what people who love to eat want to eat right now. Exactly the kind of Mediterranean peasant fare chef Marilyn Frobuccino loves to cook. Precisely what will be drawing savory mouths to Mimosa.
The fresh rough plaster of this uptown storefront covers layers of ambition, tales of restaurants come and gone. Now it’s Nino Selimaj’s turn. The austerity, simplicity if you want to be kind -- tile floor, a scattering of botanical prints, flowers in a niche -- could be a design statement, could be pinchgut economy. But the handsome Selimaj’s courtliness warms the room. Sprung from thirteen years in the cocoon of his brother’s Bruno, on East 58th, he dares to explore. “My favorite restaurant is the Gotham, and I thought the closest I could do would be Mediterranean,” he says. “And for that, Marilyn is the best.”
A graduate of New York Restaurant School and Arcadia, Frobuccino made her mark with a southwestern menu at Arizona 206, but this is her real idiom: the fried cheese and cod-rose paste of Greece, the bruschetta and fritto misto of Italy, Spain’s gazpacho and almond sauce as redefined in her splendid lemon-battered hake on a nest of escarole and black olives.
At first glance, her food seems quite simple. Wild mushrooms with garlic. Country salad in a goat-cheese vinaigrette. The subtle tapenade of eggplant, chick-peas, and green olives offered instead of butter to heap on crusty country bread. “Amazingly, almost no one asks for butter,” she marvels, clearly pleased.
Everything is beautiful, nothing tortured into art. Instead of bread-thickened white gazpacho, Frobuccino’s crisp-skinned striped bass is napped with a sauce thickened with purée of turnip and parsnip. The traditional gazpacho garnish -- red and yellow peppers, red onion, cucumber, cilantro -- is marinated in sherry vinegar and jeweled with skinned green grapes. The pickle-garlic-and-lemon touched picada sauce served in tapas bars comes with mixed fried seafood on chicory. Steeping currants in Barolo to draw out the sweetness may or may not be the secret, but the fact is her perciatelli with sardines and toasted pine nuts is the best I’ve ever tasted. Authentic? Who cares?
The sweet, firm hake in almond sauce is slightly undercooked, as requested. Salmon seared to a fragrant char in a smoky pan without fat is rare in its crust of mint, dill, and tarragon, paired with tamara and grilled vegetables, a crisp ribbon of scallion draped on top like a gift-wrap bow.
Dinner could be a duo of appetizers -- that ceviche of salmon, red snapper, scallops, and octopus “cooked” in lime juice, or grilled sherry-spiked squid with cannellini beans (preferably not so al dente), or a half-order of pasta, or perhaps the special cremini-chanterelle-and-pea risotto with a sprig of thyme (lacking just a hint of resistance in each kernel of rice, but so good anyway).
With a glass of wine and dessert, that dinner scheme could run $70 or so for two. Otherwise, despite pastas that start at $11 and entrées that never top $20, three courses with wine, tax, and tip could hit $120, what this town calls “moderate” these days.
Even though it’s so brand-new, Mimosa’s flubs are remarkably minor. Those undercooked beans, the veal chop ordered “medium” and served unevenly rarish (with luscious walnut-and-garlic-studded potato purée), the whole-wheat linguine with whole almonds and hazelnuts in an unappetizing puddle of oil. Happily, the leek-and-Swiss-chard-stuffed chicken is moist and buttery beside its herbed spaetzle. A lamb rack’s rib eye is coated with mustard-parsley bread- crumbs and escorted by a gratin of zucchini, tomato, and feta.
Desserts, too, flaunt flavor and the kitchen’s skill rather than architectural rococo. Best are mulled blueberries with ice cream, raspberry Linzer torte in a classic cookielike crust, apple-strawberry crisp, and a fudgy, trufflesque chocolate torte in unnaturally green pistachio crème anglaise.
There are French, American, Italian, and Spanish labels on the reasonably priced list. (Don’t be tempted by the Vosne-Romanée just because it’s $30 -- it’s sadly feeble. Better by far: Kendall-Jackson’s ’89 Chardonnay at $22 and Chimney Rock’s ’87 Cabernet, $26.)
The chef finds her boss wary, constantly astonished by dishes so unfamiliar to him, and she basks in his enthusiasm. “He’s like a child sometimes, eyes wide, open to everything.” But Selimaj is far from an ingénue in the business, as the polished dining-room service attests. Just to be sure, there was a waiter for almost every table on opening day. They were tripping over one another, so he sent most of them home.
But now old friends from Bruno days are discovering Mimosa’s warm welcome and citified country ways. When the neighborhood gets the word, the serving troops in bistro dress will certainly return. What a joy it is to find Brave New World cuisine seasoned with that old-world snap.
1354 First Avenue at 73rd Street.