Say When with Max Silvestri: Locanda Verde
A man about town writes about town
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Let me admit something a little embarrassing right off the bat: I'm an Andrew Carmellini super-fan. Carmellini is a highly regarded chef in this city, formerly of A Voce and Cafe Boulud, and now cooking at the Greenwich Hotel's Locanda Verde in the West Village. Journalists and diners have praised his food for years, but, weirdly, I've gushed about him to my friends without ever actually having eaten at any of his restaurants. Frankly, my friends have had it up to here with me talking about Andrew Carmellini. They are all, "Please shut up, Max! We are tired of having you around." Sometimes they say the same thing even when I am not talking about Andrew Carmellini.
I can be like that with lots of cooks, despite the fact that I can't afford to eat anywhere they work. I am not joking when I say that last week I had an item on my to-do list that said "DVR Avec Eric." It was so important for me to record the new PBS show starring Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert that I wrote it down. My life is really cool! (And in case you're wondering, the first episode was great. He goes on a wild boar hunt in Tuscany then eats a ragu made with the kill, like we all always do. They should just call the show Regular, Usual Things Avec Eric.)
I know of Carmellini through the tremendous cookbook he wrote with his wife, called Urban Italian. (That is the name of the book, not his wife.) I like to (try to) cook, and I like buying cookbooks, because I enjoy having glossy photos of salads and pheasants and things on my shelves. But rarely do cookbooks actually work. It's a lot of "The first step when making fresh red snapper is to drain one of your property's lakes." I do not own a single property, much less one with lakes. But the recipes in Urban Italian are cookable and delicious. My copy of the book is dog-eared and caked in flour and sauce and gets used many times a month. I highly recommend it. There is a recipe for homemade gnocchi with ragu (sadly boar-less, but with lamb) that is maybe the best thing I've eaten. And I have eaten literally hundreds of things.
Last week, God smiled at my lap and then dropped an opportunity into it. A record-label friend of mine wanted to take out a music journalist friend of mine to an expense-account dinner to talk "business," and I was asked to be the go-between to keep things from being awkward. What a good job. I'd like to do that full-time. Especially if every dinner happens at Locanda Verde, which is where I suggested (insisted) this one be. It lived up to my expectations. The appetizer of grilled country bread with whipped sheep's-milk ricotta is one of the more addictive things I've ever tasted, and the lamb chops I had were almost too delicious. Unfortunately, I may have failed at keeping everyone comfortable on account of how I was constantly staring into the open kitchen and trying to make eye contact with chef Carmellini, who was there in the flesh that night. Why was I trying to make eye contact? I probably looked like I was signaling that we should bang. It was unlikely that he was saying to himself, "Oh, that anxious-looking guy with wine teeth keeps staring at me. He must enjoy my cookbook and now his meal. Why don't I go to his table and give him secret tips and also my e-mail address so we can start a dialogue that leads to real and lasting friendship?" Or maybe he was thinking that and he was as scared of me as I was of him. Maybe chef Carmellini is a lot like a deer. Either way, Locanda Verde is amazing, especially if someone else pays for your meal.
