I’ll Take Romance
Fans of the Late Late Show will recognize Erminia at once. It’s that cozy little Italian joint, just down the street where Gene Kelly would woo “the girl.” Bare brick and hanging lanterns, fast-drip candles making free-form sculptures on tiny tables, fresh-starched, lace-edged casement curtains… romantic the way fifties movies promised it would be.
Except, of course, our Brave New World steamrollers innocence. Gene wouldn’t get a toe up on one of the tables here. Erminia was discovered by the wolf pack of uptown-Manhattan cognoscenti about fifteen minutes after it opened, only twelve weeks ago. The eleven tables get turned over two or three times a night. Strangers share the sidewalk out front (for lack of a bar or loitering room indoors) as early comers linger over espresso. And two of us casually spend $75 or more for dinner, easily three times what Gene Kelly’s “girl” would earn in a week. Not that we seem to mind. Erminia is romantic and cozy, and the food can be very good – though it ought to be better – and New Yorkers love paying rich and playing poor, just like Josephine wedding Napoleon carrying potato blossoms in her bridal bouquet.
And why do the waiters act as if they just got off the boat from Genoa to find three plates of vermicelli pressed into their hands? “Who gets the veal chop?” one asks. “Did you ask for this?” says another, wandering about with a bottle of San Pellegrino water (since it’s $4.95 a liter, the waiter ought to know). Erminia is, after all, the third offering from the Lattanzi clan, creators of the two popular Trastevere restaurants, down the street and around the corner, so a jot more professionalism might be expected. Still, in these times of overweening ambition, when there are rank amateurs proposing to found nationwide feeding empires overnight, it’s reassuring to watch this highly lauded crew (with Erminia, mother of the new restaurant’s chef and maître d’hôtel, as patron saint and proprietress) expand this turf so modestly.
Here, as at the Trasteveres, the kitchen is lusty and generous. But the theme is grilling over a wood fire in the Tuscan style, and, alas, that splendid notion backfires when sea creatures are left too long on the coals. Oysters and clams ($6.95) are almost invariably overdone. The lobster ($23.95), so passionately promoted by maître d’hôtel Maurizio, might as well have been cardboard. And soft-shell crabs ($18.95), one evening’s special, are inedible, brutalized by the intensity of smoke. A skewer of assorted meats – ($14.95) – sausage, a lamb chop, some chicken – suffers a similar fate. Fortunately, lamb chops ($14.95) are juicy and flavorful, even though not “rare” as ordered. The veal chop ($15.95) with a spear of grilled mushrooms can be wonderful – at least it is one evening, tangy and moist. On a second try, the meat is tasteless and tough. When we ask for chicken ($11.95) “undercooked” it arrives smoked to a delicious turn. And a request for spiedino of seafood ($14.95) “rare” is honored: the skewered calamari, shrimp, and scallops are exquisitely tender, pleasantly perfumed with the scent of the grill. All of the entrées come with heavenly roasted peppers and tomatoes – heady with basil – piled high, home-style (as everything was before three string beans and a slivered kiwi became obligatory).
Surely chef Paul will get a defter hand at the fire. But, meanwhile, no need to gamble. Almost everything else is wonderful. Erminia’s version of carciofi alla giudia ($5.95), artichokes in the Jewish style, is sautéed crisp and garlicked headily. Bruschetta ($4.95) is homemade bread brushed with olive oil and then layered with tomato slices and a melt of homemade mozzarella. Frittura of vegetali ($8.95 for two) are crunchy batter-dipped carrots, broccoli, zucchini, artichoke. Tradition suggests a squeeze of lemon, but a dipping sauce might be nice, too. A spectacular entrée is a frequent special – squid ($13.95) in a vibrantly spicy tomato sauce, with strips of garlic bread for dunking.
Pastas have real authority – they’re truly al dente where appropriate, and they’re lushly sauced. (All are tagged at $8.95; half-portions are $5). A peppery mix of tomato, garlic, black olive, and veal gives snap to vermicelli. The wide egg noodles called pappardelle swim in a blessed muck of ricotta cheese. Little ear-shaped orecchiette are dressed with just-cooked tomato, crisp broccoli florets, and Parmesan. Fatter than spaghetti, bucatini make a tangled nest for shrimp, clams, and mussels in a fresh tomato sauce. Gnocchi, those gummy little potato dumplings that are an acquired taste I long ago acquired, are seductive in a cream intensely scented with the musk of porcini mushroom.
A savvy Gene Kelly with romance on his mind might share an antipasto, divide an order of vermicelli or that squid – or both – skip the Pellegrino, and save room for Erminia’s thick, deeply chocolate mousse or its impressive tartufo: an oval of chocolate ice cream bigger than an Idaho potato, slathered in dark, bitter chocolate. All the house desserts are $3.95, and only semi-freddo, which is a dreary melt of half frozen ice cream, is a mistake, although the nicely tart apple fritters could use a dipping sauce (perhaps some of the house’s robustly Marsala’d zabaglione. You will get that zabaglione if you order strawberries, and it substitutes for pastry cream on a good fruit tart. A cream-puff concoction with fudge sauce, praline, and a pastry swan would certainly please the most persistently sweet tooth. And the espresso ($2) could not be better.
Right now it may be amusing to perch on the low brick wall outside Erminia, waiting for your promised nine o’clock table. But come winter, or even summer thunderstorms, the hazards of a triple turnover will be infinitely more perilous. After an especially long stretch in the outdoor holding pattern one recent summer night, we were offered a bottle of wine by the house – a soothing gesture that may or may not have reflected recognition of a restaurant critic. In winter, Erminia may have to offer two strictly observed sittings, warning customers in advance… or give up reservations altogether. The place is tiny. Some tables provoke serious claustrophobia. And you definitely will not feel tempted to grab Cyd Charisse and dance upon the table. But New Yorkers do love Italian food. We are fools for pasta, and love a fat grilled pork chop. And oh, how we loved romance, especially in the Brave New World.
Erminia, 250 East 83rd Street 212 879 4284
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