Tra Di Noi Is A Rich Part Of the Italian Culinary Evolution Of The Bronx’s Little Italy

The evolution of the so-called Arthur Avenue Little Italy within the Bronx, simply west of the Botanical Gardens and the Zoo, goes on at a straightforward tempo with newcomers taking on storefronts and old-timers staying put for many years upon many years. Mario’s, Enzo’s, San Gennaro, Roberto’s and Zero Otto Nove are the mainstays of a meals tradition now added to by Jap Mediterranean eating places like Gurra Café, Çka Ka Qëllu, Cakor and Avenue Gyro.

Considered one of my enduring favorites, as a lot for its cordiality as for its excellent Italian meals, is Tra di Noi (“Between us”), the place chef/proprietor Marco Coletta, from Abruzzo, gives an intensive blackboard menu (in addition to a desk menu) of dishes based mostly on what he finds each day within the in depth markets within the neighborhood.

Not too long ago this meant he might receive the fattest, sweetest softshell crabs I’ve had in ages, delicately sauteed tender in a velvety lemon-white wine sauce ($MP) I sopped up with a hunk of fine Italian bread from a basket on the desk. Different days the specials may embody gnocchi with pesto ($ 24); swordfish Siciliana ($MP); lentil and escarole soup ($11); fusilli with fava beans or broccoli di rabe ($24); or hearty veal stew ($28).

A sturdy tomato sauce, each a marinara and meat ragù, is the important thing to any Italian kitchen’s individuality, and Coletta’s is deeply flavorful, intensely pink and balanced in spices and olive oil, with the sweetness coming from the tomatoes themselves. It most delightfully seems within the Abruzzese pasta dish of rigatoni all’amatriciana ($22), studded with items of pancetta. It coats the beneficiant portion of lasagne ($23) and tender beef braciola ($30 ) swims in it. Should you like tripe, right here it’s cooked in that very same sauce, Roman fashion ($24), whereas a wealthy lamb ragù is lavished on a potato gnocchi of simply the precise measurement, lightness and tenderness ($24).

Past the tomato sauces, there are such a lot of good dishes on the common menu, starting with completely fried, crisp calamari ($17). Clams oreganato are usually not overstuffed with breading, leaving the meat to hold the flavour ($14). The linguine with vongole ($24) holds an abundance of the clams of their shell, the sauce wealthy with garlic and olive oil, whereas the fettuccine Carbonara ($23) is silky from overwhelmed,

Amongst meat dishes there are fats pork chops with vinegar peppers ($30 ) and the perfect osso buco ($45) within the space, floating in a oat of chopped, simmered greens.

With major dishes you get properly cooked white potatoes and inexperienced beans.

For dessert go together with the cheesecake, which Marco makes contemporary a number of occasions per week.

Tra di Noi is a fairly restaurant, with predictable however welcome décor of pink checkered tablecloths, sturdy picket chairs, a painted mural of Pavarotti to the rear and a window on the road. If you stroll in (and reservations are obligatory on weekends for each lunch and dinner), you’ll be fortunately greeted by supervisor Matilda, be offered with a bread basket and olive oil instantly and handed a slender, stuffed with acquainted labels and pretty tariffed. To the precise shall be Coletta, shelling fava beans, making the cheese cake batter, having his personal lunch. He’s like a guiding presence all through your meal.

The advance within the eating places alongside and flanking Arthur Avenue—which is simpler to get to from Manhattan than it’s to get via the congestion and site visitors to go to the tourist-driven Little Italy downtown—has made it a vacation spot the place many will go for the normal Italian-American meals that’s higher carried out right here than elsewhere, however at locations like Tra di Noi there may be at all times a shock for these in search of a large menu of personalised regional cooking.

TRA DI NOI

622 EAST 187^TH STREET

BRONX, NY

718-295-1784

OPEN Tues.-Solar. for lunch and dinner.