It's a simple enough menu, with a hint of northern Italy and more than a dash of the south: potato gnocchi with Italian sausage, sorrel risotto, pancetta-wrapped monkfish and Sicilian-style braised rabbit.
Covina hits its mark on all the classics — steak, pasta, and pizza, within an expansive enough menu that by the time the dessert (which is better than it has to be) arrives at the table, you'll have already made a mental note of the restaurant's address for those weekday dinners when you want something good, convenient, and cozy.
And they're reeling in enough— both menus have dozens of options beyond salumi and cheese — to force the question, are Terroir and Gottino restaurants in wine-bar drag?
Taco Bell's decision to shelve the Chihuahua ads apparently stems from concerns that they were not focusing enough on menu items, Hiatt said.
While their kitchens aren't consistent enough or their menus quite original enough to brand them destination restaurants, they have real talent in their DNA and bring serious food to a patch of Manhattan that, for all its recent strides, could still use more of it.
Last summer, I was in Tuscany, near Siena, with my family, and I don't think I failed at any meal to order ribollita or pappa al pomodoro Tuscan bread soups that I don't find often enough on the menus of Italian restaurants in my neighborhood.
And I did plenty of it: meticulously planning my meals, fixating on the "best" way to eat, inventing new recipes that would be healthy "enough," combing restaurant menus for days before an outing so I could plan my meal well in advance.
It often takes three meals before I've tasted enough of the menu to know where the strengths and weaknesses are.
It sounded tasty enough on the menu: "toasted French bread with garlic butter and melted mozzarella cheese". But what was served was soft, commercial Italian bread with a wadding of rubbery cheese in the center and sparse garlic flavor.
For now, Weeden gives me a tantalising glimpse of how he would serve the urchins if there were enough for the menu: with strips of squid, poached in a shellfish broth with spring onions and chives.
