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"FacebookPinterest\n\n You will wait for a table, as you always have, even though the new Franny&amp;#39;s has double the capacity of the old one. On a recent Sunday afternoon, when nine empty two-top tables were set and ready for customers, a smiling hostess said we would be seated in 10 to 15 minutes. Only farm-to-table is ingrained in this restaurant&amp;#39;s culture, not people to table.\n\n It&amp;#39;s been almost 10 years since Franny&amp;#39;s opened in Brooklyn, a five-minute walk down Flatbush Ave. from its present location. Crowds gathered. Nothing much has changed, although now you can reserve for parties of eight to 12. Come to think of it, that&amp;#39;s a lot that has changed.\n\n Franny&amp;#39;s is a spiritual cousin to Alice Waters&amp;#39;s Chez Panisse, the Berkeley restaurant that more than 40 years ago changed how people thought about sustainable and seasonal food. Franny&amp;#39;s is so principled and so cherished that NYC health inspectors genuflect upon entering.\n\n When the original opened, people on this coast were just beginning to think about these concepts. These days everybody knows about that stuff, the organics and biodynamics, the buying locally and eating healthfully. While such passions have been matched by similarly themed establishments, Franny&amp;#39;s remains the flagship. If its ideals aren&amp;#39;t quite so revelatory any more, they remain as alluring as ever to those who mob the place.\n\n The new Franny&amp;#39;s has a bar, several dining areas, and a lot of inexpensive-looking wood-and-metal shelving stacked with cordwood for the pizza ovens, which are illogically but intriguingly bedecked with Mexican-style tiles. The walls are mostly white subway tile. My guest insisted that the blond-wood chairs where we finally were seated resembled the ones she was assigned in elementary school. She said the hard banquette where I sat reminded her of the bench in her childhood bedroom, which had a seat that flipped up so toys could be stored underneath.\n\n Franny&amp;#39;s has never been lovely. That hasn&amp;#39;t changed. The black matte finish out front\u2014what rappers call &amp;quot;murdered out&amp;quot; when they see it on automobiles\u2014seems poorly chosen, but perhaps Franny&amp;#39;s is out to attract a new generation of diners with fast cars.\n\n On that first visit, during the 10-15 minute wait at the bar, my friend attracted substantial attention from a guy sitting on the other side of her. He even offered her a taste of his drink. That seemed a little racy for a wholesome spot like Franny&amp;#39;s. Maybe the new generation has already arrived.\n\n \u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nOn my second visit, the bartender and I had an insightful conversation.\n\nHim: What would you like?&amp;gt;\n\nMe: A cocktail. Not sweet. Not fruity. Very cold.\n\nHe made me a Pimm&amp;#39;s No. 348, which you&amp;#39;ve never had before\u2014348 is the street number for Franny&amp;#39;s. It tasted gorgeously of cucumber, plus mint and lemon. Franny&amp;#39;s makes syrups and infusions, squeezes fresh juices, does cocktails well.\n\nMe: I refuse to pay only $12 for this drink. It&amp;#39;s great. I want to pay double, like in Manhattan.&amp;gt;\n\nHim: Don&amp;#39;t worry, there&amp;#39;s already plenty of profit built in.\n\n Should you not wish to drink while awaiting a table, I can suggest ways to pass the time. Walk downstairs to one of the rest rooms and count the rolls of toilet paper stacked there. Mine had 88. Or try deciphering the exceedingly ambitious, highly curated, all-Italian wine list.\n\n It might be the geekiest list in America, incomprehensible to normal human life forms. I know something about wine, but I was lost amidst unknown names and unhelpful organization.\n\n On visit three I brought a wine director for a restaurant group with me. She looked at the list and said, &amp;quot;I need an hour to figure this out.&amp;quot; Franny&amp;#39;s has no sommelier on the floor. The waiters try to assist, but they&amp;#39;re overmatched. I asked one of them how diners navigate this, and she replied, &amp;quot;Fake it, ask for help, or order the cheapest bottle on the list.&amp;quot;\n\n Fear not. You can triumph. Transport your mind to a world beyond Pinot Grigio. Ignore vintage dates unless you&amp;#39;re looking for a red over $100, and there are few of those. Look for a grape you might recognize\u2014vermentino, kerner, dolcetto, nebbiolo. There&amp;#39;s even Chardonnay. The 2009 Scaglione Barbera is a simple red of perfect clarity.\n\n Do not be afraid to take chances. I did.\n\n I picked out a pigato (that&amp;#39;s a grape).The wine buyer for the restaurant, general manager Luca Pasquinelli, brought it over, explaining, &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s a little salty.&amp;quot; Salty? Who ever heard of salty wine? Well, I&amp;#39;d found one. You could gargle with this wine.\n\n Franny&amp;#39;s service, by a staff dressed in dark shirts and jeans, is remarkable for such a casual and busy place. I asked for my appetizers, pasta, and pizza in three distinct courses, expecting to be told that they&amp;#39;d come out when the kitchen decided to send them out. That&amp;#39;s the way it usually goes these days. Not here. The staff changes flatware between courses and sweeps up crumbs. It&amp;#39;s informal service idealized.\n\n From the time Franny&amp;#39;s opened ten years ago, the owners, Andrew Feinberg and Francine (Franny) Stephens, have done everything admirably. The old Franny&amp;#39;s wasn&amp;#39;t just a symbol of a new era of eating, it was also at the forefront of a changing Brooklyn. It opened near the start of the 21st century and quickly displaced the beloved but somewhat dated Saul and Al di L\u00E0 as the most representative restaurant of the borough. (Feinberg and Stephens&amp;#39;s new place, which will be in the old Franny&amp;#39;s location, is a bit of a throwback, a rustic trattoria to be called Marco&amp;#39;s.)\n\n Franny&amp;#39;s original appetizers were precursors to the small-plates, shared-plates trend. They continue to be unfussy yet meticulously assembled and rarely anything but very good. (Well, the sad, droopy, slow-cooked romano beans seem to have been cooked too slowly.)\n\n Irresistible items include any with sausage. The beef sausage served as an appetizer contains pork and cheese. The beef sausage on the pizza has neither, but they&amp;#39;re not missed. Whenever sausage appears, order it. There&amp;#39;s a crostini of wood-roasted pancetta with ramp butter, essentially crisp bacon on buttered toast. How can you improve on that? The warm pork-cheek and tongue terrine brought back memories of tongue as it tasted long ago in New York delicatessens. Of course, delicatessens back then didn&amp;#39;t add pig parts to their beef tongue. Their loss.\n\n My favorite dishes at Franny&amp;#39;s do not spring from the earth.\n\n Yet the dishes containing only vegetables are satisfying, at the least. The marinated cucumbers couldn&amp;#39;t be crunchier. Wonderful fried polenta, crisp outside and soft within, is gorgeous, classically accessorized with ingredients that represent the flag of Italy\u2014green (basil), red (tomatoes), white (soft crescenza cheese). Most dishes burst with marinated and fermented flavors, lots of garlic, almost as many herbs. You won&amp;#39;t be bored.\n\n Pastas tend to be excessively al dente. I&amp;#39;m still chewing on the rigatoni I had a week ago. The best version I tried was spaghetti with seabream, agretti (a firm, crisp, vibrant little green shoot), bread crumbs, and a hint of hot pepper. The only flaw? It didn&amp;#39;t need the seabream, its featured ingredient. The desserts remain earnest. The gelato, made down the street at Bklyn Larder, is somewhat grainy. The best of them, the panna cotta, is a study in vanilla. The cannolo\u2014that&amp;#39;s a single cannoli\u2014is crunchy and lemony.\n\n The pizza is stunningly attractive, Neapolitan in appearance, with charred bubbles and a round, puffy rim. A few had overly chewy, slightly undercooked bottom crusts. When they come out thin and crisp in the center, they&amp;#39;re among the best around. The pizza ovens are new, and adjusting to them appears to be a work in progress.\n\n A perfect clam pizza boasted big, fat, fresh, out-of-the-shell littlenecks bathed in creamy clam juice, the most luscious cooked clams I&amp;#39;ve ever eaten that weren&amp;#39;t fried. A tomato-garlic-olive-oil pizza boasted an abundance of fresh, sweet tomato sauce and first-rate olive oil.\n\n As we know, Franny&amp;#39;s is not really an Italian restaurant. It&amp;#39;s an inspired interpretation of what one could be, but that final pie was a tour de force of classic Italian authenticity. More than any other dish, that was the one worth waiting for.\n\n Stars:\n\n Don&amp;#39;t Miss This... Cocktail: Pimm&amp;#39;s No. 348\n\n White Wine: 2010 Punta Crena Mata\u00F2ssu Vigneto Rein\u00E9, $58\n\n Red Wine: 2009 Dante Scaglione Barbera d&amp;#39;Asti, $55\n\n Appetizer: Wood-Roasted Beef Sausage with Fermented Green Tomatoes\n\n Pizza: Tomato, Garlic, Oregano, and Pianogrillo Extra Virgin Olive Oil"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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