Da Umberto, The Best Restaurant in New York

February 10, 2009 10:17 pm

Da Umberto, The Best Restaurant in New York

I want to begin this post with a disclaimer. I probably have no business making the bold, sweeping statement I am about to make. The restaurant that I describe in the following paragraphs might as well be my family's second kitchen. We ate there weekly for years until my mother unceremoniously sold our childhood home on 17th street in Manhattan and moved us to Brooklyn (my father, in an act of defiance, continues to eat there around three nights a week). Brooklyn is fine. Not too long ago, I moved there myself. But, it lacks proximity to Da Umberto.

Da Umberto is the best restaurant in New York City. I know. It sounds outlandish and I probably won't elicit Adam Platt or Frank Bruni's support here. One disgruntled diner on nymag.com even blustered that "Da Umberto should have closed years ago! Mediocre food...cavalier service and high prices will keep this diner away permanently." This person is clearly insane. Speaking of crazy people, the maniacs on Yelp.com love Da Umberto. In the age of unappeasable Internet wack-jobs (of which, Yelp bloggers are among the wackiest), positive feedback on their review list rivals praise from pretty much any other source.

Yelpers and established gastronomes aside, Da Umberto is really the best restaurant in New York because it is old-fashioned and stodgy. There may be legions of places in New York with better food. No one has ever declared the Branzino at Da Umberto "transcendent" and the risotto is not a revelation. Cooler restaurants abound. Their white table clothes can't compete with the gritty-glam dè
cor at Graffiti and bright young things don't wait in line for the bathroom en masse or hardly pick at their undressed salads. Okay. But, it really isn't about that.

Da Umberto is simple. They won't lead you on an aesthetic odyssey to rediscover your taste buds. And, as far as I know, the word "umami" has never left a waiter's mouth. The food, though, is real. In her biography on MFK Fischer, Joan Reardon recalls that the highest praise the critic ever bestowed on a dish was that it was good. This is how I feel about Da Umberto—the food is unquestionably good.

When you arrive at your table, the waiter pulls out chairs for all the women, graciously welcomes you and drops a bowl of olives on the table. Although these olives were not salt cured on a Mediterranean island the size of a Walmart, they're fantastic. There is no point in reading the menu. In fact, I don't think I've ever really looked over the whole thing before. I'm sure, though, that it resembles the menu in every other mid-range trattoria throughout the city, filled with grilled vegetable antipasti, veal scallopini, and rigatoni Bolognese. All of these dishes are probably fine (although the angry New York magazine reader review above makes me wonder if he ordered straight from the menu).

To really experience Da Umberto, you have to request a special. This list is longer than the printed menu and changes daily. Miraculously, the waiter always has all twenty plus plates down verbatim. He knows them so well that he can describe them to you in poetic detail (even though English is clearly not his mother tongue). He probably also knows you, the diner, so well that he can recommend three of them and like some kind of culinary fortune-teller, his suggestions will be perfect every time.

The list always begins slowly. First, a salad of arugula, pears and pecorino. Then, a venison carpaccio with white truffle oil, avocado stuffed with baby shrimp, artichoke hearts with mint. During the pasta dishes, the waiter increase the pace, uses more adjectives. Rabbit risotto, Tagliatelle with squid-very nice, linguine with shaved truffle-only in season right now and quite expensive but worth it. It really reaches a climax during the entrees. Venison osso bucco with risotto Milanese-meat falling off the bone. Sea bass filleted at the table. Filet mingon with green peppercorn sauce. Whole roasted suckling pig. Rabbit with honey and black pepper.

The only real problem arises after the waiter lists all sixty specials for the night and walks away from your table, leaving you to (hopefully) remember two or three of them. It is not unusual to order by default. If only the porcini ravioli comes to mind, well, you will probably eat ravioli. However, if you are my father, you will heedlessly order off the menu. Whether he wants chicken cacciatore or "that spaghetti with spicy sauce," the waiter accommodates him every time.

This, I believe, is another sign of a perfect, old-fashioned, neighborhood restaurant. Maybe it's a result of Tom Colicchio's pomposity on Top Chef. It might have to do with the deification of enfant terrible chefs like Grant Achatz. Whatever the reason, we have experienced a dramatic shift in restaurant culture. Those of us naïve enough to believe that we dine out in order to be served and coddled, need to retire our twentieth century sensibilities. Today, chefs don't comfort and soothe; they inspire awe and reverence. Da Umberto recalls a gentler time when you could specially request a chicken cutlet off-menu without running the risk of summoning the chef from the kitchen to put you in a headlock until you either beg for mercy or order his pan-fried sweetbreads with capers and rhubarb compote.

Finally, there is dessert. Here, I'd like to pose a question. Why has every single contemporary restaurant done away with the dessert cart? Nothing thrills me more than watching the waiter wheel over a trolley larded with tiramisu, chocolate mousse, panna cotta, napoleon, berries and cheesecake. Really. Do pedigreed restaurant goers find the dessert cart tired and tacky? If not, what have they disappeared? In any event, Da Umberto has one and if you're wise, you'll order a big plate of pillowy tiramisu scooped right from a giant bowl on the cart. I can joke about the quality of the rest of the food, but I want to be completely serious for a moment. Da Umberto serves tiramisu's platonic ideal. The lightly sweetened, floral mascarpone melts in your mouth revealing the tender espresso soaked lady fingers hidden underneath. Their other desserts satisfy, but none can compete.

If you remain unconvinced that Da Umberto is the best restaurant in New York, I understand. I'm not sure that, as an outsider, this post would persuade me either. "Stodgy," "old-fashioned" and "uncool" are not typically adjectives that lure me through a restaurant's doors. All I can say is the following: trust me. Or, if after all of that you're still a little skeptical about me, trust those satisfied people who yelped about their Da Umberto experiences. After all, could hundreds of intensely opinionated amateur restaurant critics really be wrong?

Cecilia Estreich

Da Umberto
107 West 17th St
New York, NY 10011
212.989.0303