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"FacebookPinterest\n\nAndrew Carmellini, possibly New York's most adored chef, became famous more than a dozen years ago when he was chef de cuisine at Caf\u00E9 Boulud, a French restaurant with a three-star rating from the New York Times that deserved four while he was there. Since then he's been building an empire, which now includes five local restaurants, the newest being Bar Primi, which Carmellini calls a \"pasta shop.\" Intentionally or not, he has unquestionably distanced himself from the pretentions of formal French cuisine.\n\nThe \"pasta shop\" label, found on the website and on business cards, is nonsense\u2014a pasta shop should sell pasta at retail, which Bar Primi does not. (One friend who wanted to buy a few pounds was so infuriated she cried out, \"I feel gypped.\") But you can get a lot of pasta there, pasta every which way and for not very much. Everything on the menu is under $20 except for a single nightly special that's the only main-course option. The one I tried, five in-the-shell prawns, each one balanced on a tiny island of chickpea puree in a sea of sofrito, was satisfying as well as nicely priced at $26.\n\nBar Primi is named for the primi course, where pasta is found on a classic Italian menu. And pasta is the centerpiece here. More menu options follow, but once you've finished your pasta, in my opinion it's time to ask for the check.\n\nThe Bar Primi menu starts with an atypical category called Piccolini, or little things, the best being two bruschette, or toasts. One was topped with eggplant and too much wonderfully creamy goat yogurt, a lovely mess. The second was a pile of ricotta as light as marshmallow fluff plus bits of ripe fig. The Antipasti course\u2014usually listed first on Italian menus, second here\u2014offers dishes substantial enough to make up for the paucity of main courses. They provide a welcome protein fix.\n\nThe stuffed meatballs in a dense, oniony, red sauce are undersized but exceptionally light and fragrant, about as good as meatballs get, a major accomplishment in meatball-mad New York. The chunk of melting Fontina cheese in the center isn't necessary, but it is entertaining. The meatballs come three to an order and cost $12, which incited a debate at our table: Why does almost everything Italian inconveniently come three to an order? Here, thankfully, you can pile on extra meatballs for $4 apiece. One of my guests, an Austrian, declared them \"the best meatballs I've ever had in New York.\" I innocently asked if they were better than the meatballs she's had in Italy. She scornfully replied, \"I don't order meatballs in Italy.\"\n\nSal's antipasti salad, not truly Italian, is a nod to the chef in charge, a 29-year old Carmellini lieutenant named Sal Lamboglia, born and raised in the Bensonhurst section of New York. He's good enough to deserve a place in the gallery of successful chefs who have graduated from Carmellini's kitchens, the most prominent being David Chang, who worked at Caf\u00E9 Boulud. The salad is a product of Lamboglia's pre-teen days working in a sub shop. He wondered why the ingredients that went into a sandwich wouldn't do just as well with vinaigrette instead of bread, good thinking for a kid. Every bit as satisfying are the mussels, immersed in a well-spiced, meaty, tomatoey broth that could be mistaken for Portuguese. The bowl of mussels is topped with slice of toast spread with 'nduja, a soft sausage. One guest thought it was every bit as appealing as cheesy bread, even if it's nothing like cheesy bread.\n\n Pastas are listed as Traditional and Seasonal, resulting in Pasta Category Confusion. The Traditional is indeed traditional, but the Seasonal is inexplicable. It's currently a cornucopia of spring vegetables such as spinach, broccoli rabe, and artichokes, and we are indisputably in the summer month of August. Nor could I figure out why the lamb pasta was listed under Traditional, while the veal dish was Seasonal. As the world turns, the mind reels.\n\nThe dish that flawlessly fits the concept of Traditional is spaghetti pomodoro, an ode to the famous San Marzano tomatoes of Italy, which produce a magnificent sauce any time of year. Lamboglia works wonders with canned tomatoes, attributable to lessons he learned from his father, who was born in Naples and worked on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. The star of the Seasonal collection, even if it isn't seasonal, is the fiore de carciofi, totally ingenious and deliriously satisfying, as inventive Italian creations so seldom are. A long hollow pasta tube is stuffed with artichokes, mascarpone, and pecorino, then set in a bacony sauce. The chef believes the final twirled arrangement resembles an artichoke flower; to me, a Skee-Ball target at an arcade in Atlantic City. I had it twice, to unanimous raves the first time, somewhat less acclaim the second, when it was overwhelmed by lemon.\n\n Beware the Zany Zester, as I came to call him, a cook in the Bar Primi kitchen who loves adding prodigious amounts of lemon zest to dishes that require little or none. He also nailed our ricotta ravioli. He can strike at any time.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nIn the late 1930's, during the Great Depression, the New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling described a typical eating house on the Bowery. He wrote, \"There are long wooden tables varnished with gravy, which has been massaged into the grain of the wood in the course of years. Salt and pepper are in open dishes and the customers reach in with their hands. The average check is ten cents, and payment entitles the customer to sit up all night and keep out of the cold.\"\n\n No other street in New York history has risen and fallen with the regularity of Bowery. Today, it is another emerging, fashionable, Manhattan dining district. Bar Primi sits elegantly on a leafy corner, the boughs of a flourishing tree curling past the windows on 2nd Ave., an old fire escape on the Bowery side festooned with plant life, as though a 19th century family was in residence.\n\nThere was a moment when service at Bar Primi offered a glimmer of days gone by. As two of us took our seats at a table for four, the waitress brought over breadsticks, long and light. Three of them came in a paper cone set within a narrow glass. I smiled as engagingly as I could and said, \"There are going to be four of us.\" She smiled back and replied, \"There are some pieces at the bottom of the paper.\" They were down there, broken, waiting for me to turn over the glass so they would fall onto the table, a presentation out of the past.\n\nService is friendly enough, although somewhat rustic, as you can see. An exception is that of Josh Nadel, who directs the wine program at Carmellini's restaurants and invariably acts as sommelier during the opening of new spots. He won't be at Bar Primi forever, so take advantage of him while you can, because the wines are somewhat obscure and he is very good at describing them. The price range is reasonable, almost every bottle selling for $40-$70. When I challenged Nadel to find a white wine I'd love for $45, he convinced me to make it $50 and brought out a white that combined purity of fruit with an absurd name, La Cave du Vin Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle \"Vini Estremi.\" I couldn't resist a wine I'd never heard of made from a grape, Pri\u00E9 Blanc, that I'd never tried. That's why sommeliers are fun to have around.\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Noah Fecks/Courtesy of Bar Primi\n\n One you have progressed to the end of the menu, gotten past the pastas, your luck runs out. The Specials of the Day are intriguing, but inasmuch as there is only one each day, they basically serve as an alternative for anyone not eating pasta, not as an additional course. The cheese option is a flat-out mistake, the portions miniscule. We had a supersized, five-item plate costing $25 that was so lacking in cheese we all started laughing the moment it appeared. Desserts are free of finesse. Our tiramisu resembled a lopsided souffl\u00E9, the loser in a TV dessert-making competition, although it tasted better than that sounds. There is no pastry chef, the sort of cost-saving measure that led to another interesting conversation with the waitress:\n\nME: What is the gelato of the day?\n\n HER: The gelato tonight is hazelnut.\n\n ME: It's hazelnut every night. Has it ever been anything else?\n\n HER: I've only been here three weeks.\n\n ME: Okay, was it anything else in those three weeks?\n\n HER: I don't know what they served on my days off.\n\nSkip dessert, but if you cannot resist, try the peaches with fior de latte gelato and sangria, and hope the fruit is riper than what we got.\n\nCarmellini apparently conceived Bar Primi seven years ago, and had he opened it then, before everything in New York was trending toward informal and casual, it might have been a sensation. Now it's merely one of many places of a similar nature, more appealing than most, thanks to Lamboglia. The layout is relad and familiar, the tables small, the most titillating aspect of the ambience a lineup of lit votive candles lining the wooden steps to the second floor. I kept thinking of the cow of legend that kicked over the lantern that started the Chicago Fire of 1871.\n\nThe customers are generally young, usually loud, and tend to dine late. Bar Primi takes no reservations for small parties, but tables have been easily obtained before 7 p.m. Every night that I dined the place was packed with women, young ones, causing one of my friends, also a woman, to remark, \"There are only attractive women, hot 20-somethings, no men.\" I asked Lamboglia what lured them, and he replied, \"I'd like to believe they came for the food.\"\n\nStars: Two\n\nDon't Miss This:\n\n Cocktail: Splendido (Soave, Mezcal, lemon, rosemary syrup), $12\n\nWhite Wine: 2012 Marisa Cuomo Furore, $65\n\nRed Wine: 2004 Molettieri Taurasi Cinque Querce, $85\n\nPiccolini: Eggplant bruschetta, $8\n\nAntipasti: Mussels Calabrese, $13\n\nPasta: Fiore di Carciofi, $19\n\nDessert: Peaches, fior di latte, sangria, $10"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/bar-primi>