Home made pasta at L’incontro by Rocco.
Photograph: Courtesy of L’incontro by Rocco
I’ve beforehand referred to as any restaurant bearing the approval of our mayor and unofficial membership promoter, Eric Adams, a red flag. However final week, my convictions have been challenged when, already en path to dinner at L’incontro by Rocco, I peeped Adams’s grin framed by a Knicks hat and two thumbs up on its opening-night Instagram post. Pushed by momentum and starvation — plus the promise of rollatini and meatballs — I made a decision this was not the time to pivot.
L’incontro is in its third week of operation on the Higher East Aspect, however it’s not precisely a brand new restaurant. For 25 years, it stood on thirty first Road in Astoria, previous to closing on the finish of Might. Chef and proprietor Rocco Sacramone, who emigrated from Abruzzo to Astoria in 1970 along with his mother and father and late brother, blames “uncontrolled” hire for shutting down his former flagship. When he wasn’t capable of negotiate a deal to remain, Sacramone determined to totally flip his efforts to the Manhattan restaurant, initially meant to be a second location, which had been in growth since earlier than the pandemic.
The venue could have modified, however the recipes are all the identical, which turns into obvious when the big, uncomplicated platters hit the desk: mussels in purple sauce from a bread bowl, grilled figs and prosciutto with combined greens, dover sole for 2. This isn’t meals that was engineered for a restaurant in 2024, however it’s pleasing, and the room, a lot smaller than the unique, is already stuffed with individuals who really feel proper at house, like a desk of colleagues ordering successive bottles of Sassicaia and the hefty man at one other desk gesticulating with an unlit cigar at any time when there wasn’t a fork in his hand. I used to be in awe of a pair cuddling on the banquette, taking on two separate tables like they owned the place.
“A whole lot of the those that we see nightly right here, there’s at all times between 10 and 20 those that I knew already from Astoria,” says Sacramone. “Whenever you set up your enterprise for 25 years, you already know, your prospects develop into members of the family, virtually.” A number of days earlier, he’d Ubered in one in every of his weekly Astoria regulars to attempt the brand new spot. “The final week that he knew that we have been closing, he got here each single night time.”
Workers is one other carryover, each cooks and servers, so the room operates with a fluidity that doesn’t often exist in a weeks- and even months-old restaurant, reciting specials and doling out baked clams simply as some have achieved for greater than a decade.
I began with an artichoke particular, which Sacramone thinks ought to be obtainable by summer season or so long as he can get “excellent” ’chokes. It arrived reasonably unassumingly in a wide-brimmed bowl, barely stewed in a pale broth till the outside leaves collapsed from tenderness, with a light-weight layer of melted Fontina and toasted, anchovy-laced bread crumbs sprinkled on prime. The mix of bread crumbs, wine-scented broth, and cheese grew to become a porridge-y bread soup as I ate. I beloved it; this stuffed artichoke didn’t style prefer it had been round for 25 years — extra like 100, which might be why it’s one of the best factor I’ve eaten at a restaurant in months. I additionally had an order of rooster parm, utterly coated in a wealthy, barely candy tomato sauce and browned mozzarella, which was completely nice.
There isn’t a scarcity of Italian meals in New York, however Italian eating places like this — current out of time, beholden to neither tendencies nor TikTok — are more and more endangered. Simply look, for instance, on the latest demise of Pietro’s. It’s too dangerous. Each neighborhood wants a spot that’s as instantly comfy and alluring as L’incontro.
As for Adams, he was a first-timer who got here to eat with some pals of Sacramone’s. What did the mayor, whose food plan is famously “imperfect,” find yourself ordering? “He needed a bit of fish, however ‘I don’t eat this, I don’t eat that,’ so I simply made it in parchment paper,” the chef says. “Quite simple — no oils, no nothing.”