Killer Carbonara, Straight from the Source | The New Yorker
"At 43 MacDougal St., the New York Roscioli—a collaboration between Alessandro Pepe and Ariel Arce—offers a downstairs tasting-menu dinner-party (about $130 per person, à la carte $8–$60) in which you are handed a drink on arrival and swept through a parade of predetermined courses with parallel Italian wine pairings; on my visit the opener was a semi-roasted-tomato panzanella with whisper-thin mortadella and a warm, pillowy burrata flown from Puglia (my server joked about the carbon footprint) paired with a frizzy, leaf-yellow Asprinio di Aversa, and the meal continued with an impossibly buttery saffron risotto and an all-time carbonara—guanciale fried into crackly slivers and a funky-rich emulsion—that felt revelatory even as the relentless rhythm of everyone eating the same thing made the pace start to feel overwhelming; I loved the meatball on polenta and the silly-perfection of tiramisu and a tiny cannolo with Moscato, and upstairs (the street-level, shop-the-pantry room) I found the deli-atmosphere I’d hoped for—shelves of dried pasta, oils, vinegars, jars of sott’olio vegetables and cheeses and salumi for sale, a counter facing a glass case of provisions, and a menu built for grazing with holy Roman pastas (carbonara available upstairs, bright all’amatriciana, cacio e pepe made with fresh tagliolini), oxtail-stuffed supplì, paper-thin fried zucchini with mint, crudos of tuna in multiple preparations, lamb tartare with crispy capers and artichoke aioli, and fried baccalà over floral red-pepper cream; the upstairs room is charmingly flawed—cramped tables, glaring noise as conversations ricochet off jars—but it’s an energizing, convivial cacophony that feels absolutely like being in New York while wearing Roman clothes." - Helen Rosner
