890 2nd Avenue (near 48th Street)
212-355-5540
chazzpalminterinyc.com

    Back in the ‘70s a style of Italian restaurant emerged in NYC that set itself apart from the dated “red sauce” restaurants with checkered tablecloths and Chianti bottle candle holders. Not that stellar Italian restaurants hadn’t existed—the elegant Piemontese ristorante Barbetta opened in 1906—but these new, so-called “Northern Italian” restaurants, like Il Nido, Il Menestrello and Gianmarino, most of them on the East Side, prepared pastas tableside by captains in tuxedos. They had décor familiar to a clientele familiar with the best restaurants in Rome, Florence and Venice. None served pizza, which was considered a trattoria item, not one found in a true ristorante.
    Sadly, many of those ristoranti disappeared; some closed while others, like Il Mulino, were corporatized and lost their individuality—just as a new wave of downtown trattorias serving “gourmet” pizzas began attracting an arts and fashion crowd with their casual atmosphere, brick walls, loud music, cramped quarters and witless waiters in t-shirts with the restaurant’s name on the front. On the West Side elegant new places like Marea, A Voce and Lincoln Ristorante opened, but were in a different style from those of the 1970s and 1980s.
    Now, thanks to actor-director Chazz Palminteri—in partnership with the Sinanaj brothers, who also run Empire Steakhouse and Ben & Jack’s Steakhouse—the brand new 140-seat Chazz Palminteri Ristorante Italiano near Grand Central Terminal restores much of the classic look, food and service that has been missing for the past decade. 
    The premises used to be a pizzeria, but you’d never know it now. The décor is sumptuous, graceful, in rich fabrics and colors of Parma gold, with antique brown leather chairs, red tiles, and of course thick tablecloths and linens, with mirrors that open up the space still more. The wine list is 250-label strong, along with Chazz’s own brand of Sicilian BIVI vodka. The maître d’ wears a well-cut tuxedo. 
       And Chazz Palminteri is regularly on premises, greeting old friends and new guests who know his work from “A Bronx Tale” (which he wrote and starred in) so well that they quote lines from it.
    Abundance is a virtue here, from large antipasti platters and pasta to a true rack of baby lamb and massive venison chop. And the most expensive item on the menu (besides chateaubriand for two at $84.95) is a USDA Prime ribeye at $44.95; that’s almost a bargain these days.
    We began with antipasti of roasted asparagus splashed with sherry and generously topped with a gratin of Parmigiano ($12.95) and jumbo shrimp alla romana ($15.95) sautéed with chopped spicy peppers in a light and very creamy Gorgonzola sauce served over garlic bread. You could make a meal out of these. 
    All the pastas we tried were very good, including ravioli with funghi porcini glossed with a rich black truffle sauce ($26.95). Potato gnocchi were excellent, just the right plumpness, in a rich veal ragù with shavings of Parmigiano ($23.95), and tender housemade bucatini alla carbonara with sweet onions and pancetta, and mixed with an egg yolk, so it didn’t really need the touch of cream ($20.95).  Pastas may be ordered as appetizer portions.
    There is always a temptation to go easy on the main courses after such rich pastas, but you would be missing wonderful dishes like Dover sole baked with fresh herbs and served with a lemon caper sauce (market price).  A hearty, country-style dish is the chicken alla scarpariello with sweet garlic, hot cherry peppers, sprinkled with rosemary and cooked in a white wine sauce, a lavish dish for just $26.95.
    You will find a veal chop on every Italian menu in NYC but not a rack of veal (market price), as served here, topped with sautéed onions, mushrooms, peppers, fresh herbs and served with roasted potatoes.  Unless you share this dish, you’ll probably take a lot home. The same goes for a juicy rack of American lamb (market price) served in a well-reduced mint sauce. And the special the night I dined there was the first good venison chop I’ve had this winter, meaty, mildly gamey, in a well-seasoned wine-dark sauce.
        If you feel you need to, share a slice of good cheesecake at the end.
       Celebrity-partnered restaurants rarely have little more than a name on the door, with very little input from the celeb, who may or may not know anything about the food served.  At Chazz Palminteri you are guaranteed two things: that the Sinanaj brothers are the pros behind the restaurant, purchasing high-quality ingredients and maintaining an Old World service style, and that Chazz Palminteri has his own vision of what a restaurant with his name on it should be and he’s not about to let that change.

Open for lunch and dinner daily; fixed price lunch at $25.95.

CANTINA SANTA MARIA LA PALMA BRINGS
SARDINIAN WINES INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
By John Mariani

    At one o’clock in the afternoon on a December day in Alghero, Sardinia, I was staving off jet lag in the most sensible way: eating tiny shrimp, mussels, razor clams, calamari and fried moray eel in La Boqueria, the city’s fish market, while drinking a sparkling Vermentino di Sardegna called Akènta.
    The fishmongers’ stalls were already being washed down, having sold all the seafood brought in early that morning.  But on the premises is a tiny trattoria with a blackboard menu of the day’s offerings, and by the end of this midday meal, I felt as happy and effervescent as the bubbles in the wine.
    I was there with representatives of Cantina Santa Maria La Palma, composed of 326 growers who contribute their grapes to Sardinia’s most modern winery, just outside of the seaside city of Alghero.  The Akènta sparkling wine is made by the Charmat method, aged six months on the yeasts, making for bracing freshness with plenty of fruit and flower flavors that went so perfectly with my extravagant, if humble, seafood lunch.
    Over the next two days I was to learn much more—and eat much more—that brought me up to speed on contemporary winemaking in Sardinia, now, as in Sicily, building its reputation on cantinas and co-operatives rather than individual wineries.   It is believed the Phoenicians brought wine grapes to the island and that the Spanish might have introduced the Vermentino grape, now planted all over the island.  (In France the varietal is called rolle.)
    Cantina Santa Maria La Palma prides itself on its rustic roots and its “humble winemakers, [who] rather than a silver spoon, had strong arms, straight backs, passion and commitment.”  Today the company produces an array of red and white wines that are remarkable for the vibrancy and depth they have, even when released so soon after they are made from the latest vintage.
    Founded in 1959, at a time when Sardinian wines had no reputation and little availability outside the island, Cantina Santa Maria La Palma realized that by central control of co-operative growers, the wines could be made better and with more consistency, fresher, less prone to oxidation, and at price points that have made them appealing in a global market flooded with bland varietals.
    Sardinia, south of France and west of Italy,  has a very hot, very dry land, so irrigation of the vineyards is allowed; you taste the flintiness of the soil and the brininess of the surrounding Tyrrhenian Sea.  One of Santa Maria's wines, Akènta Sub, is actually lowered into the sea for a while to age (below).
    Under the Aragosta (“lobster”) label Santa Maria produces a bright DOC  Vermentino di Sardegna ($11.99) intended to be drunk as soon after bottling as possible, so I was actually enjoying a 2015 in the middle of December, with a delightful 12 percent alcohol. It is in fact Italy’s most popular bottled DOC white wine, selling 1.5 million bottles out of Santa Maria’s total 4-million-bottle annual production of all wines. There is also a good rosé ($10.99) under the Aragosta line that I enjoyed with cured meats and pecorino cheeses.
     Vermentino Blu is made from the same grape,  a lovely, creamy wine, very silky, a perfect match with grilled prawns.  Papiri is their top-of-the-line Vermentino, made with handpicked grapes from specially selected old vines.  The 2014, with 13 percent alcohol, is a formidable white wine that I’d put up against the very best whites in Italy right now.
    The company’s red wines share the notion that youth, not long aging, has its own charms, depending on the grape.  In Sardinia, the most significant red grape is Cannonau di Sardegna, DOC produced near the towns of Maristella and Guardia Grande, where the sandy soil is calcium-rich, with ferrous clay, making for a very earthy wine, but also one with several layers of fruit, acid, and mineral flavors.   Santa Maria’s Riserva  2012 is a big red, though with only 13.5 percent alcohol, neither overbearing nor harsh.  Instead, it is velvety on the palate and an ideal wine to go with the Sardinian roast suckling pig called porceddu.
    Cagnulari 2014 is made from a native grape, which some believe was exported to Spain to be part of the blend of Rioja, while Le Bombarde 2014 ($13.99), made from Monica di Sardinia grapes, has the most pronounced fruit flavors, particularly of cherries. The label depicts old cannons, symbolizing the many times Sardinia had to defend itself from invaders.