THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY10, 2020 11
PHOTOGRAPH BY ZACHARY ZAVISLAK FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
1
TABLESFORTWO
Leo
123 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn
Improbable but undeniable: beans are
having a moment. Last December, the
food Web site Eater published an essay
called “Cool Beans,” which detailed “How
the humble legume—especially heirloom
varieties—became the go-to ingredient
for home cooks.” (In 2018, this magazine
profiled Rancho Gordo, the largest, and
cultiest, retailer of heirloom beans in the
U.S.) As of this month, you can buy a
book, unaffiliated, called “Cool Beans:
The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with
the World’s Most Versatile Plant-Based
Protein,” by the food editor of the Wash-
ington Post.
And so you could say that the peo-
ple behind Leo, which opened last fall
in Williamsburg, have their fingers on
the pulse, pun intended (and apologized
for). For several years, Ops, a restaurant
in Bushwick with some of the same
owners, has had simply prepared beans
on its menu. At Leo, Scarlet Runners,
an heirloom variety, are gently braised
with garlic, rosemary, and sage until eas-
ily crushed between the teeth but still
firm and meaty, generously salted, and
finished with a glug of grassy olive oil.
Anthropologists reading this in the
future, take note: Leo is a useful time
capsule, a snapshot of right now. To drink
with the beans, there is natural wine, to
which diners—who, like the staff, skew
young and stylish, in cropped pants and
clogs—may help themselves from a shelf
or a refrigerator by the bar. (To readers in
the present, I suggest asking for a recom-
mendation, lest you find yourself misled
by a whimsical label into choosing some-
thing with top notes of wet cardboard.)
To sop up the bean broth (also known,
to Rancho Gordo heads, as pot liquor),
there is naturally fermented sourdough,
baked on the premises and available by
the loaf in an adjoining takeout shop.
Leo’s pizza—Neapolitan-style round pies
in the dining room, Roman-style square
slices in the shop—and calzones are also
made with naturally fermented dough.
On a given day, a calzone might be
stuffed with ’nduja and collards, a pizza
topped with tangy farmer cheese, flow-
ering broccoli, prosciutto, and Robin’s
Koginut squash, a variety bred by the
chef Dan Barber. A salad listed on the
menu as “lettuces” might be heavy on
chicories, pale spears of tender Belgian
endive mingling with magenta ruffles
of Treviso radicchio, frilly frisée, and
flat-leaf parsley, all slicked in a citrusy
vinaigrette.
More than one trend forecaster has
predicted that lasagna is going to be
huge in 2020. At Leo, you can order
a gorgeous slab of it: pillowy layers of
thin noodles, stretchy provola cheese,
and bright, tart marinara, with a bit of
bite from crackly edges and the finely
chopped blanched kale folded into the
sauce. You’d never know it was glu-
ten-free (thanks to corn-flour pasta).
For something sweet, the soft-serve
is great—a swirl of pithy grapefruit
and caramel approximates a breakfast
brûlée—but the tiramisu, that lasagna of
desserts, is better. Until fairly recently, I
associated tiramisu with the kind of red-
sauce joint whose charmingly chintzy
atmosphere is more alluring than its
food. It seemed too often to be a stodgy,
compacted mass of ladyfingers and mas-
carpone cream, chalky with cocoa pow-
der and flavorless but for blunt hits of
Marsala wine and coffee, as if it were
trying to sober itself up.
A few years ago, I started to suspect
that a renaissance was afoot. At Una
Pizza Napoletana, on the Lower East
Side, they swapped the ladyfingers
for lemon sponge cake, the Marsala
for rum and Cynar. At Leonti, on the
Upper West Side (now, sadly, closed), the
mascarpone was so light that you could
see air bubbles. Leo’s version comes in a
fluted glass tumbler that showcases its
appealingly messy striations, as spoon-
able as pudding. Vanilla angel-food sheet
cake is soaked in espresso and a soft spike
of rum and amaro. The finished trifle is
showered in delicate curls of Askinosie
chocolate, and each creamy bite bears
an unmistakable vein of salt. Tiramisu is
as cool as beans. (Dishes $5-$14, pizzas
$16-$22.)
—Hannah Goldfield
