At Da Giorgio Calabrese Kitchen In New Rochelle, Trust Giorgio To Choose Your Menu Of His Specialties
It is the complaint of those who dine out frequently that so many Italian restaurants in the U.S. serve the same menu. Which doesn't bother me a bit, simply because each cook makes a dish its own way and in Rome most restaurants serve Roman dishes like cacio e pepe, penne all'arrabiata and spaghetti alla carbonara and other Roman dishes.
Nonetheless, it is always more enjoyable when you come upon a restaurant that veers from the tried-and-true-and-popular while including the safer old favorites.
At Da Giorgio, in the New York suburb of New Rochelle, chef-owner Giorgio Giacinto is doing exactly that. For 20 years he has been pleasing his conservative clientele with familiar dishes while providing 40% of his more adventurous guests with new ideas and recipes from Calabria, whence comes his family (He was born in the Bronx.).
He opened Da Giorgio in a small shopping strip, with just 46 seats, all filled most nights Da Gorgio is open. The posted menu doesn't really hint at what Giacinto is capable of, so when I dined there with several friends I let him cook for us. None of the dishes had I found elsewhere, starting with some superb, very fat soft shell crabs fried crisp with slivers of garlic and topped with a jalapeño pepper.
Before this, he brought out a clothes line dowel with silky thin slices of Prosciutto di Parma hung above an array of Italian cheeses, including smoked imported burrata, Parmigiano, a cup of black, green and red olives, soppressata and peppers. For an appetizer he makes a very pretty, light and refined Calabrian dish as a mosaic of sliced octopus carpaccio with a tangy dressing and crushed taralli breadsticks for contrasting texture. Perky, peppery chicory and a ginger line dressing adds spark to a salad of very tender seared calamari.
Eggplant rollatine is no rarity on Italian-American menus, but Giacinto's keeps the focus on the vegetable, not the sauce. The eggplant is first salted then quickly dipped in flour and egg batter, rolled with
a mixture of ricotta cheese, spinach, and Parmesan then baked, not deep-fried, with a judicious amount of tomato sauce.
Giacinto knows precisely how important the timing is to pasta, so his rigatoni da Giorgio had the perfect chew. First he flash sears slivers of filet mignon that are removed and replaced by thinly sliced zucchini and the pan de-glazed with cognac, a rich demi glaze and heavy cream. The dish is finished with truffle zest and parmigiano. It's a terrific example of his generous style of cooking.
'Chicken Grandma' is more a tour de force than an exceptional dish. Basically it's a form of chicken parmigiano with the chicken pressed flat to form a ten-inch circular chicken cutlet. This is then pan fried, topped with house-made mozzarella, baked and further topped with the pesto the tomato sauce, all of it then put under the salamander to brown and, finally, served with rigatoni in a vodka sauce. It's pretty but the sum of the dish is less than its pretty parts.
Tender octopus dressed with olive oil and lemon
Da Giorgio
Ingenuity carries over to dessert, with a straciatella gelato with Sicilian Orange olive oil with crumbled amaretto cookie and sea salt.
When it comes to very personalized cooking, small is almost always better, and Giacinto's little dining room has all the bustle and good feelings of a true trattoria. But he goes further and farther than many of his colleagues who play it safe with a menu of old favorites. Da Giorgio is a place always full of surprises.
Full portions of pasta cost between $19 and $26; main courses $25 to $37.
DA GIORGIO CALABRESE KITCHEN
77 Quaker Ridge Road
New Rochelle, NY
914-235-2727
Open for dinner Wed.-Sun.
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