Scarpetta

Upload your photo »

There are chefs, and then there are chefs...and then there’s Scott Conant, the beloved Italian-cuisine star whose exit from Alto and L’Impero last year left devotees with withdrawal symptoms. He’s now back with aneeded fix: Scarpetta, his new down-home Meatpacking District Italian spot—the name alludes to food so savory, you’ll wanna mopevery last drop with a piece of bread (or scarpetta—“littleshoe”). “I sat down with a bottle of red wine and listened to a lot of Bob Dylan,” he cracks about mulling over the menu during his hiatus. What Dylan hath wrought: a streamlined selection of appetizers (polenta with truffledmushrooms), pasta (tagliatelle with braised lamb-shank ragu) and mains (blackcod with caramelized fennel), all bearing the chef’s trademark soulfulness.“When I think back to my grandmother making cavatelli, there was a certain honesty and correctness to that,” he says about his Italian grandmother’s cooking, a key influence. “It’s the spirit from those memories that I try to impact into my dishes. It’s what hasshaped my vision of what Italian food should be."

See more:

New York restaurants, Italian restaurants