Spiga

Spiga is one of those mildly popular, but underrated restaurants hidden on a quiet, otherwise residential side street on the Upper West Side. Since I’ve never had trouble making last-minute reservations at any time I like and am nowhere close to being a VIP, it seems to me that Spiga is nowhere near as popular as it ought to be given the quality of the kitchen. Though the service can be somewhat flighty, the kitchen, without question, has its shit together, despite sometimes heavy-handed salt shaking.

Every course we had was deeply flavorful and made with high quality ingredients. We started with appetizers of creamy cow’s milk cheese with tomato tartar and spicy gelatin (burrata con tartara di pomodori e gelantina de peporoncino) and a half-portion of the pumpkin ravioli with parmesan cheese and basalmic vinegar sauce (ravioli di zucca con parmigiano reggiano e aceto balsamico) listed as a primi. The cheese was a lovely, tender, and mild-yet-flavorful cousin of the more commonplace mozzarella, so simply beautiful that it makes one wonder why the practice of serving it isn’t more widely replicated. There was no readily comprehensible evidence of spicy gelatin—which I found disappointing, having imagined a quivering, black pepper Jello cup—though the mound of orange stuff, which didn’t look or feel or taste at all gelatinous, had some heat, I think from red pepper. Either way, I’m not entirely sure the flavor combination worked with the cheese. There was too little acid and too much salt. The small spoonful of creamy, deep orange served with the dish, evidently the tomato tartar, was too sweet and a little reminiscent of ketchup. But both were easily avoidable. I focused my efforts on the already-perfect cheese, lightly drizzled with high quality olive oil.

Though the pasta part of the pasta pumpkin ravioli was a little too tough, either from overcooking or reheating, the innards were fragrant and well-flavored, with a nice hint of nutmeg. The dish had just the right amount of creamy, white sauce and, in contrast with the commonly committed sin of so many American Italian restaurants, was not drowned and overwhelmed by it. I was happy to note that the balsamic vinegar reduction, drizzled attractively overtop and adding color to an otherwise white dish, was an authentic sweet and full-bodied balsamic vinegar, not one of its ubiquitous poorer cousins frequently passed off in the US as being balsamic vinegar.

For main courses, we had the pan roasted breast of duck served over a turnip puree, with apples, dried fruit and chocolate sauce (petto d’anatra con mele, pure di rape, rutta secca e salsa di cioccolato) and the pan roasted pork loin with spicy honey sauce served with braised cabbage, fried cream, and crispy pancetta (filetto di maiale con salsa di miele e peperoncino, verze stufate, crème fritta e pancetta crocante). Both were delightful.

We had a small snafu when the servers brought out the wrong dish for me, but the correct dish for my SO. So as we waited for my order to come through, my SO and I shared his duck. I have to confess to being a sucker for the combination of dark, rich meat and lightly bitter turnip puree, hitting on the same theme often in my own cooking. The chocolate-infused sauce bedding the entire dish brought this classic combination to a new level, however, by highlighting, all at the same time, the dark, rich flavors in the duck and sweetness of the apples and pleasant earthiness of the turnip. The sauce, though understated, brought the entire plate together and united its disparate elements into a coherent message. Apples in the dish came in the form of two, petite, roasted halves, their translucent butter-yellow attractively contrasted against the pale turnip puree. The “dried fruits” in the dish were slivered dried apricots and a lovely topping of what I think were pine nuts and pistachios, again making for a nice color combination (pale green and gold). My sole complaint with this dish was that it was too salty. It’d been brined to achieve its soft-as-butter texture, but too much of a good thing had resulted in deeply-imbedded excess salinity, demoting an otherwise near-perfect nine to a seven-and-a-half or eight.

As tender buttery as it was, the duck was a “tough” act to follow. But to my great surprise, the pork was even better. The meat was cooked exactly to my specifications (medium) and again very tender, served over a large pile of humble, but oh-so-delicious braised cabbage. This was no wilting mush of a cabbage pile, here; it was pleasantly al dente, the natural light sweetness working with the honey sauce rather than being overwhelmed by it. The spice in the honey sauce derived from pepper—generous amounts of freshly ground, cracked black pepper. Its strong flavors did well against the cabbage and pork, and competed in a friendly way with the equally bold, crispy pancetta. The big unknown element of the plate was the fried cream, an unidentifiable round of something breaded, that oozed just slightly when cut, much like warm cream cheese. It was solid, not liquid, and more cheese than cream. It was delicious, but it perched to the side of the cabbage hill like a sideshow, neither here nor there in the flavor notes of the dish. Its primary function is probably to lure diners in search of adventure to an otherwise mundane-ish sounding dish, diners like me who are drawn in to the strange, the unusual, the gluttonous and most especially, the unusually gluttonous (cream? fried?). That is, it was a little gimmicky. Not entirely out of place, not entirely in place… The jury is still out on this one. Grade: 9.5.

For dessert, we had the pear strudel with gorgonzola ice cream and chocolate and rosemary sauce (strudel di pere con gelato al gorgonzola, salsa di cioccolato e rosomarino). As noted above, I like surprises, and the gorgonzola ice cream was certainly a surprise to me, ironically for how true to the original the flavors were. It was no dumbed down version of gorgonzola that resided in this innocuous-looking ball; it was the full monty: loud and pleasantly stinky. It perhaps didn’t work perfectly with the buttery-crusted pear strudel, stuffed generously with raisins and pecans—one thinks first to gentler cheeses like brie or camembert for gentle fruits like pear, even spiced as this one was with cloves and ginger—but it did work for me, if not for the SO.

We had two glasses of poorly matched wine with our meal—poorly matched by our own doing, not the restaurant’s. I thought that a Piedmont red and a spicy Nero D’Avola Chiaramonte Firriato would do well with our entrees, but really the food called for something fruitier and more Cabernet-y than what either wine had to offer. These two glasses and our food came to be a little over $100, excluding the dessert, which the waiter had been nice enough to comp, and tip.

Spiga is, in my book, a far better value than Cesca, the better known destination Italian in the nabe. And it is a cozier, friendlier space, to dine in, too. Food and service are not always perfect, but both are charming and there are enough home runs to keep me coming back for more.