When Maria Perreca Papa announced last year that she bought and would be reviving Cornells in Little Italy, which closed at the beginning of the pandemic after 77 years in Schenectady, 68 in the same family, Susie Davidson Powell and I discussed reviewing Cornells 4.0.
Papa, who owns the restaurant More Perreca's and co-owns the adjoining, century-old Perreca's Bakery, across a parking lot from Cornells, said she'd rehired virtually the entire staff, including bringing back the former co-head chef to run the kitchen. And the menu would showcase most of the favorites from the past, Papa said. As a result, Powell was uncertain about a review. She'd written one in 2017. What would be different? She asked if I might be interested in subbing for her.
Well, I said, I've been going to Cornells since it was Cornell's and located on Van Vranken Avenue, not on Little Italy's North Jay Street, where it lost the apostrophe. In fact, you could say I've been dining there since before I was born. This is literally true: My parents had dinner at the restaurant several times while my mother was pregnant with me. Further, JoAnn Cornell Aragosa, whose parents founded Cornells in 1943 and later turned it over to her, was an inspiration for my father opening his own Schenectady restaurant, The Oxbow Inn, in 1976.
So we've got some history, Cornells and I do.
It feels largely the same as when I last visited, five years ago in February. This is by turns good and not so good.
Food arrives fast. Even on a Saturday night a month after reopening, when the large restaurant was essentially full before 6 p.m., plates sped from the kitchen without making us feel rushed. We ate two courses within an hour and departed after spending about 80 minutes total. The staff handled the onslaught with aplomb, weaving adroitly between bar area's closely spaced tables, where the backs of chairs at adjacent parties were often inches apart, sometimes touching when the occupant stood up.
The homey Italian dishes look and taste familiar, comforting. With large portions and modest prices, these sections of the menu offer a fair value. It would require an appetite far more capacious than mine to finish the $23 braciole. About the size of a flashlight that takes four D batteries, its thin, tender beef wraps a stuffing of Sindoni's sausage, provolone and Perreca's breadcrumbs before a long simmer in a sauce bright with tomato and just the right hint of acid. One would be a fool not to mop that sauce with a chunk of Perreca's bread, its famed thick crust scattering crisp shards onto the tabletop when torn. I was not a fool.
One of my companions, a friend's teen daughter familiar with the Italian restaurant scene in Albany and Utica if not Schenectady, considered her $20 bowl of penne alla vodka. She liked it, she said, but no more so than an $8.99 to-go version from Cardona's Market in Albany, and that comes with chicken meatballs. Two other starters, plates of Utica greens and broccoli rabe with sausage, played their stock parts expertly, offering neither variation nor disappointment. Disappointingly, they were served no more than warm, suggesting the steam table needs a temperature adjustment and/or that the food shouldn't have been put on cold plates. I need say nothing about the filler-heavy clams casino; of the predictable by-the-glass wine list, only that the seven flights are a nice touch. The bottle list is better, with 54 entries, from $26 to $221, many at $45 or less.
Papa said the menu would complement old favorites with an "elevated steak and seafood experience," and to that end she buttressed Executive Chef Ryan Nicklaw's team by hiring Anthony Vagnini, who has done two stints at the steakhouse Salt & Char in Saratoga Springs and made a name for himself with a program of long-dry-aged beef at East Cove restaurant in Lake George.
The 10-entree Bistecca e Pesce section of the menu averages $32, with a full half of its dishes costing more than $35. This is notably high on a menu where pastas average $24, Italian entrees $1 more. Worse, the sense of value vanishes when you see the $38 rib-eye is a broad, thin, albeit flavorful steak marked with an unimpressive crosshatching of grill lines. The menu promises "roast shallot demi glaze." What we received looked like someone had spilled onion soup on the steak and topped it with a sprig of rosemary. The potato-and-veg offering, a lamentable plate of broccoli, cauliflower and gluey, tepid mashed potatoes with pale onions, proved an emphatic if unintentional reminder to always opt for a red-sauced pasta side, even with a steak.
My friend's elder child, a senior in high school, was initially impressed by his dish of scallops with lobster risotto, the most contemporary of any plate we were served, in conception and presentation. Crusted with a solid but not aggressive sear, properly seasoned and pleasingly translucent inside, the large scallops showed the work of a sure hand. The risotto's lobster nuggets were small and few, however, and its salt level, not apparent in the first few bites, had a cumulative effect, requiring repeated reaches for a water glass. And he couldn't get his head around the price: $42 for four scallops, which after tax and tip works out to more than three hours on the clock at his sub-shop job. He'd pay that for thrilling food, he said, noting that he's done so for sushi, but what he'd just eaten didn't qualify.
That juxtaposition between old and new Cornells extended to the service, which, depending on the moment and the staffer, alternated from attentively professional to a busser who during a post-entree visit took away just one plate. He then returned to standing against a wall, hands in pockets and in full view of us, while the remaining three people at our table, also finished eating, sat facing uncleared plates for what became an amusingly long period of being ignored.
My overall impression of the new Cornells in Little Italy is a restaurant assured of its past, more tentative about its expanding direction. For now, I can see sitting at the bar for a chopped salad or bowl of zuppa di vongole with a glass of Montepulciano and that legendary Perreca's bread. I can't see returning for another dinner for four that, for two courses each and a single glass of wine, somehow ends up costing $250 after tax and tip.
Cornells in Little Italy
Address: 39 N. Jay St., Schenectady
Hours:
Prices: Salads and starters, $6 to $20; pasta and entrees, $20 to $42; desserts, $10 (only the zeppole are made in-house); wine, $9 to $14 by the glass, $15 to $78 for half-bottles, $22 to $32 for flights, $26 to $221 by the bottle
Info: 518-630-5002 and facebook.com/CornellsinLittleItaly. The website, cornellsitalian.com, is under construction.
March 15, 2022 at 07:22PM
https://www.timesunion.com/food/article/Cornells-in-Little-Italy-A-little-refreshed-a-16991851.php
Cornells in Little Italy: A little refreshed, a lot familiar - Times Union
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment