Locanda Vini e Olii opened in 2001 and has been widely reviewed and visited by all manner of intrepid eaters. I am not exactly clearing away underbrush with my gastronomical machete here, but last night I visited the Clinton Hill Tuscan restaurant for the first time and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to tell you about it.
Without drawing out my own kidnapping plans I’ll just say that the restaurant is located in absurd proximity to my apartment. I could probably hear my dog barking from a seat on the sidewalk on a good/bad night. This is a plus for me, but not necessarily any credit to the restaurant, as my neighborhood – Clinton Hill verging on Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn – is no culinary mecca. Yet the dearth of Manhattanites is a comfort to a Brooklynite like me when coming upon a place like Locanda: tables are open for seating, the clientele as well as the service is unpretentious and there is no sense of urgency or sceney-ness to the experience. The focus is on the food, so the food had better be good.
It’s lucky then that when the bread was brought to our table, I was sufficiently distracted by Locanda’s charming décor. Built in a century-old former pharmacy, the owners of the restaurant maintained the druggists’ shelves, rolling wall ladders and dark wood details to almost supernaturally cozy, Old World effect. It’s the last sort of place you expect to be brought bland, textureless white bread to kick off the meal. No olive oil, certainly no butter, just sliced white bread accompanied by an equally flavorless spinach spread. Huh.
We ordered a crisp, dry white wine (as it was a sticky, damp night and one has to keep one’s humors in order) and things began looking up again. Wine at Locanda is sold “consumption”-style, which means you open a bottle, drink what you will and in the end a nice Italian man comes out with a home-crafted stick and charges you for stick lengths missing. We drank our entire bottle though, so that’s only what I hear, not what I experienced… the novelty of such a method is almost enough to leave a little tipple at the bottom of the bottle next time.
The kitchen purportedly is run by two imported Italian chefs, and I was struck immediately by the ingenuity of the short menu. Locanda uses only free-range meats and eggs, all of their beef is certified Piedmontese beef and, as with much traditional Italian cooking, there is a delightful focus on fresh and seasonal ingredients. The menu is constantly evolving: the sign of an interesting if not always pleasing restaurant. I talked to our waiter about the “Charcuterie from the Sea” octopus sopressata and tuna salami and was told that the octopus is washed and hung in cheesecloth just as traditional sopressata is prepared. Very interesting.
We ordered three small plates to share: one “For the Table”, one Appetizer and one Salad. The Lamb Prosciutto with Pear and Rosemary Marmalade was chewy and intensely mineral tasting. It was cured nearly to the point of jerky, but the richness of the lamb came through especially well with a sip of wine; the distinct iron-rich tissue flavor was not aided by the marmalade, but neither was it overpowered. I ate the rest of my prosciutto portion unadorned, straight from the shared plate.
We ate the Venison Carpaccio with Vin Cotto, Chevril, Blueberries and Lemon Zest next. The carpaccio slices were similar in color and richness to liver and perfectly pink and melting. Dolloped with vin cotto and accompanied by a sort of finger salad of the chevril and blueberries, the entire plate had a citrusy, summery effect. So sweet, light and rich, I swear it could pass for dessert.
But it was the salad – ‘Cantelope Melon and Hazelnuts, Fuji Apples, Baby Spinach, Romaine, Mint, Olive Oil and Lemon’ – that stole the meal and almost made me forget about the life-draining bread. Besides saying it was made with the freshest produce and served barely chilled, I can’t do much to improve upon the plate’s evocative ingredient list. It was an important seasonal revelation for me though, and I’ll be doing my best to recreate the salad this Sunday and in summers to come for the rest of my life, I imagine.
The dishes we chose were light on the palate but satisfying, we still had wine left and dessert was the only thing to do. An in-tact fresh peach cake and some pastry puffs of a sort I can’t recall were plopped down at our settings for consideration, and a clearly popular chocolate tart was held aloft where, I imagine, we couldn’t be tempted to lick it. Sharing a slice of the peach cake, my companion grew animated and proclaimed that the amaretto flavor of the batter spoke to his soul. True enough, the pastry was deceptively light on the palate, the natural state of the peach slices suspended within was barely altered, and I made a promise to turn a recently acquired 5 lb. bag of market peaches, at least partially, into one or more of such a cake.
As we finished the last of our wine I stared out through the café windows at the moon rising above the silhouetted brownstones and I felt that we could be anywhere other than New York at that moment. The miraculous Italian knack for turning simple food into decadent flavors is transporting, and I resolved to return (though perhaps not weekly as my companion enthused), to try that Seafood Charcuterie plate and to be inspired anew.
… And hopefully to observe a bread upgrade that does justice to the vivacious spirit of Locanda’s menu.
3 nuts! With the expectation that next time it may get 4, but never with that bread.
Locanda Vini e Olii is located at 129 Gates Ave. at Cambridge Place in Brooklyn. 718-622-9202.
They have fantastic hours:
Tue-Thu, 6pm-10:30pm; Fri-Sat, 6pm-11:30pm;
Sun, 6pm-10pm; Mon, closed
great review. I do hope to one day share in that salad with you!
The menu was too meat laden for my sensibilities, but that salad and cake sound so good- what a combo! I’ve added peaches and plums to muffin batter and hella-yummy! Moist.
Needed to use the dictionary twice. Thanks for nourishing my brain, too.
Living in suburbia- I can just imagine that having good restaurants within a dog’s bark of my house would empty my bank account and cause all my clothes to shrink.
nice review..
i’ve eaten there on a few occasions and i think the official explanation for the bread is that it represents authentic tuscan bread which has been made without salt since the middle ages (something about rebelling against a salt tax).
While their attempt is noble, I agree that the bread isn’t all that enjoyable.