The First Bite column in the Oct. 24 Food section incorrectly described a dish at the New York restaurant Fiamma. It should have read: "a sumptuous lasagna stacked with sheer rounds of pasta and a Madeira-sweetened ragu of veal, sweetbreads, chicken livers, mushrooms and (flourless) bechamel."
In the same section, the amount of butter listed for the cake portion of the Mary Lee's Pumpkin Spice Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting recipe was incorrect. The correct amount is 4 tablespoons, or half a stick.
First Bite
For This Baby, No Growing Pains
Chef Fabio Trabocchi, shown at Fiamma in 2007.
(By Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
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NEW YORK -- Can a salad change a man's life? Let Jarad Slipp, the suave host at the late Nectar in Washington and now the general manager of the recently recast Fiamma in Manhattan (206 Spring St.; 212-653-0100), answer the question.
"This is what sealed the deal for me," he says as a plate of burrata and tomatoes is set before me in one of the most talked-about dining rooms in the city. Slipp is recalling the moment he knew he had to accept an invitation to work with chef Fabio Trabocchi, the maestro who left Maestro in Tysons Corner in August to take over this two-story Italian charmer in SoHo.
Sampling the first course in question, I catch its allure -- and feel transported back to the good old days at Maestro. The ingredients are simple but exquisite. The cheese, flown in twice weekly from Andria in southern Italy, is possibly the best burrata to have crossed my lips. The tomatoes, which include a light puree thickened with bread crumbs, taste sweetly of summer. The olive oil is liquid gold (Manni extra-virgin, from Tuscany), and the faint crunch of toasted bread crumbs adds sound effects to the still life on the table.
Within nanoseconds of Fiamma's relaunch in September, New York tastemakers descended on the place. What they discovered were jewel-like crudi served with silver-dipped tongs ("Italian chopsticks," jokes a server); potato gnocchi "smoked" on a bed of hay; suckling pig cooked two ways and with two accents (dill blossom and fennel pollen); a sumptuous lasagna stacked with sheer rounds of pasta; a Madeira-sweetened ragu of veal, sweetbreads, chicken livers, mushrooms and (flourless) bechamel; and an amazingly smooth-running show. The secret? When he left the four-star Maestro, Trabocchi was followed to New York by his chef de cuisine, his pastry chef, his fish chef and several dining room leads.
Fiamma, says Trabocchi, "is like a newborn child." Young as it is, however, the restaurant suggests a prodigy in the making.
Three-course tasting menu, $75.
