New York Magazine - USA (2019-09-16)

68 new york | september 16–29, 2019

PHOTOGRAPH: SCOTT HEINS FOR NEW YORK MAGAZINE

À la Modena

Rezdôra pays homage to Italy’s most delicious region.

by adam platt

F

ew things stir the hearts of big-

city food aficionados these days like

the news of the arrival in town of

yet another highly touted upmarket

pasta destination. Italian cooking replaced

French cuisine at the top of New York’s

great food-snob pyramid long ago, of

course, but in this streamlined, comfort-

addled age, nothing draws a crowd quite

like the latest iteration of uni-

larded noodles from Sicily, say, or

a properly executed faux-Roman

carbonara or selection of esoteric

Ligurian dumplings (or are they

Venetian?) shaped like gondolas or

hats or tiny, carefully twisted candy

wrappers. As Grub Street reported

not long ago, the appetite for the next “It”

noodle has become so extreme that chefs

around town often travel to the old coun-

try to unearth forgotten regional delicacies

and have even been known to conjure up

strange names and murky pasta origin sto-

ries all their own.

Not that Stefano Secchi—whose hit res-

taurant Rezdôra has been mobbed with

hordes of frenzied pasta loons more or less

since the day it opened in a narrow, predict-

ablycacophonousspaceintheFlatiron

District—employs any of these slightly

dodgy tactics. Secchi grew up in Dallas, but

he’s a scholar of Emilia-Romagna, the

breadbasket region responsible for many

iconic Italian dishes besides pastas and

ragùs, and as a young cook, he served

apprenticeships in the most renowned

kitchens in the province (most notably at

Massimo Bottura’s Osteria Francescana in

Modena). The pasta section of his

menu is filled with meat-stuffed

anolini dumplings from Parma

and faithfully executed Modenese

ragùs, and like many restaurateurs

in Italy and elsewhere, he has a

fondness for invoking the homey

traditions of Grandma’s cooking

(rezdôra is Modenese for “grandmother”).

It took me a while to get a taste of Sec-

chi’s cooking, although it wasn’t from a

lack of trying. The restaurant attained the

Resy reservation app’s dreaded “notify”

status long before the laudatory reviews

started rolling in, and even now it’s best to

plan at least a month in advance if you

want to secure a table. I was politely turned

away when I showed up at 5:30 p.m. to try

to get a seat at the front-of-the-house din-

ingbar,andwhenImanagedtosecurea

spot weeks later (hint: Show up when the

doors open at five), I quickly plunked

down $90 for the five-course pasta tasting

menu, which included tiny tortellini

poured with a deeply flavored chicken

broth (delicious); a nest of thin, eggy

tagliolini folded with a rich Modena-style

ragù made with mortadella, prosciutto,

and plenty of gently simmered pork shoul-

der; and the aforementioned crown-

shaped anolini dumplings bathed in a

creamy Parmesan sauce that was a little

overwhelmed by a drizzle of Modena’s

most famous export, balsamic vinegar.

Were these carefully articulated (and

not inexpensive) bites of pasta worth the

hassle of scoring one of the somewhat

cramped seats at Rezdôra? For serious afi-

cionados who pride themselves on being

up on the latest pasta fashions and trends,

the answer would be yes, especially since

only two of the items on the tasting menu

show up on the regular à la carte list (the

tagliolini and the anolini). But there are

plenty of less crowded, equally accom-

plished pasta destinations in town, and if

you lose yourself in well-executed but

familiar dishes like spaghettoni con von-

gole ($24 on the à la carte menu, tossed

with plenty of clams, parsley, and garlic)

and that old haute-pasta favorite uovo

raviolo (constructed here in the classic way

with an infusion of ricotta and herbs, a

single egg yolk, and shavings of truffle on

its brown-buttered top), you may miss

what’s arguably the best part of dinner at

thispolishedlittlerestaurant.

Rezdôra

food

Edited by

Rob Patronite and

Robin Raisfeld

VERYGOOD

Rezdôra

27 E.20thSt.,

nr.Broadway;

646-692-9090;

rezdora.nyc

key: The rating scale of 0 to 100 reflects our editors’ appraisals of all the tangible and intangible factors that make a restaurant or bar great—or terrible—regardless of price.