Food arts Magazine, January/February 2004

Peasant

194 Elizabeth Street, between Prince and Spring Streets,

SoHo; telephone 212.965.9511

moderate to expensive

If Al Di La is akin to a trattoria in a small town in Italy, then Peasant is akin to a trattoria in Milan. Brick walls, wooden church pews, aluminum Emeco chairs, and the glow from the wood-burning ovens combine to produce an oxymoronic rustic-urban environment. Pretentiously, the menu is written entirely in Italian, and the waiters insist on translating every-thing for you, even after you tell them you read Italian. Of course, if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to hear them say silly things like “the osso buco is made the traditional way, with lamb shank, not veal.” But all of this is beside the point. The food is excellent. Dinner begins with thick slices of Sullivan Street Bakery’s crusty bread served with DiPalo Dairy’s creamy cow’s-milk ricotta. Were I served nothing else, I’d be happy stopping there.

Frank DeCarlo, the chef, is known in culinary circles as a bit of a pyromaniac, and he uses his wood-fired ovens to good effect. Among the appetizers are sarde al forno (baked fresh sardines), crisp outside and moist inside from the high-heat cooking. Pizzas are thin and crisp; the pizza bianca e funghi has a light topping of intense cheese and porcini. Fagioli toscani con tonno (white beans with tuna and arugula) is exemplary. The beans are cooked al dente, the arugula is fresh and crisp, the olive oil in the dressing has a gentle fruitiness, and the large shards of imported canned tuna are tasty. I laughed when I overheard someone at the next table tell his date not to order this dish because “it was just canned tuna.”

Most of the pastas are homemade and good, and they come in very large portions. Occasionally, the fire burns through this section of the menu, too, as when half a roasted lobster was balanced atop a pile of buccatini in spicy tomato sauce. Wide, delicate maltagliati were tossed in a light rabbit sauce, a sort of sugo without cream or tomato. The rice in a risotto with langoustines was cooked until it was too soft and could have used a stronger punch of flavor.

Most of the entrees also come out of the wood-burning oven or off the grill; whole fish, porchetta, and that lamb-shank osso buco, benefitting from their high-heat cooking, are all moist, tender, and generously portioned. The seasoning palette of the kitchen – ample salt, fresh herbs, an occasional pinch of hot pepper, light char – highlights the natural flavors of the ingredients, which is a very Italian approach. For dessert, large fruit pies, peach in summer, apple in winter, are baked to order; they are excellent. A recent pistachio gelato had a dense chewy texture and a pronounced pistachio flavor.