12 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY28, 2022
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TABLESFORTWO
PHOTOGRAPH BY ALISTAIR MATTHEWS FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
Zaza Lazagna
zazalazagna.com
If you’d asked me, a couple of weeks ago,
how I felt about caponata, the agrodolce
(sweet-and-sour) Sicilian relish that is
almost always made with eggplant, plus
tomato, aromatics, olives, and capers,
I would have shrugged. When had I
last eaten it? On sad crostini, cold and
clumpy? Ask me now and I’ll tell you
that the other day I had caponata for
lunch—not as a condiment or even a
side dish, just straight caponata, directly
from a plastic deli container, spectacular.
The caponata was made by Zahra
Tangorra, the chef behind the late, be-
loved Cobble Hill Italian restaurant
Brucie, who now operates a takeout
operation called Zaza Lazagna. Her
interpretation featured butternut squash
instead of eggplant, plus white sweet
potato, cauliflower, San Marzano to-
matoes, sage, rosemary, raisins, Castel-
vetrano and Kalamata olives, and red
onion—surprising but deftly layered in
both texture and flavor, an apt example of
her freewheeling, intuitive cooking style.
Before Brucie, Tangorra had never
worked in a kitchen. In 2006, after art
school and a stint as an Urban Outfit-
ters window designer, she was touring
through California with a group of mu-
sician friends when their bus plunged
over a cliff. Incredibly, everyone survived.
Ta ngorra was moved to reconsider her
life. She loved to cook, and with set-
tlement money from the accident she
opened Brucie.
When she closed the restaurant, in
2016, “we were kind of at the height of
our popularity,” she told me recently, but
she was feeling burned out, and transi-
tioned to consulting and catering. At
Brucie, she had offered a charming ser-
vice: B.Y.O. pan, and they’d bake you a
lasagna to eat at home. In November,
2020, her friends at Shelsky’s, a smoked-
fish shop on Court Street, agreed to let
her use their kitchen for Zaza Lazagna,
to prep heat-and-serve lasagnas (sold
whole, in disposable aluminum trays, and
by the slice), plus other comfort foods
(including meatballs and enormous
loaves of tomato-butter garlic bread), for
pickup from the shop on Friday evenings.
Every week in the colder months,
Tangorra and her business partner, a
former Brucie cook named Ryan Cross-
man, make a classic meatless lasagna,
with red sauce, ricotta, mozzarella, and
provolone, and a special lasagna, often
inspired by pasta dishes that don’t travel
as well (Alfredo, Amatriciana), or by,
say, the Super Bowl, as in the case of a
recent spinach-and-artichoke variety.
That one anchored a loose game-day
theme, rounded out by Negroni ribs,
braised with whole mandarins in gin,Campari, and vermouth, and Buffalo-
chicken-stuffed shells, laced with blue
cheese and dill.
To compensate for the loss of dining-
room atmosphere, Tangorra and Cross-
man find ways to be playful, from a lively
Web site—the whole classic lasagna ad-
vertised with an image of Garfield the
cat, a pint of Sexy Slaw with a still-life of
vegetables arranged to look like a reclin-
ing nude—to the handful of candy (say,
Andes chocolate mints) that gets tossed
in with orders. Each Friday, they solicit
pairings from Brooklyn Wine Exchange,
across the street from Shelsky’s, and pour
tastes as they distribute the food; if a
bottle strikes your fancy, you can pop
over and buy it at a discount.
A few weeks ago, my Zaza haul in-
cluded a paper cup wearing a skirt of
fringed tinsel, like a go-go dancer; be-
neath its lid I found a foil firework cock-
tail pick sticking out of an Aperol-spritz
cake that could only be described as
groovy, glazed in a tie-dye pattern of
pinks, its glossy crumb fragrant with
olive oil. When we spoke, Tangorra men-
tioned Raymond Carver’s short story “A
Small, Good Thing,” in which a young
couple seeks comfort after a tragedy; a
guest on “Processing,” a podcast that she
co-hosts with her mother, a bereavement
therapist, had recommended it. “Some-
times just doing that small, good thing
for people—you don’t know what they’re
going through,” Tangorra said. “It could
go a long way.” (Dishes $10-$32. Whole
lasagna starts at $40.)
—Hannah Goldfield