Grub Street

These days in New York, chefs tend to learn their craft in uptown kitchens (if they think about Manhattan at all), then move inexorably downtown. But with Cesare Casella, it’s been the other way around. During the course of his varied New York career, the personable chef from Tuscany has pedaled his special brand of rustic home-style Tuscan cooking down in the Flatiron district (at his breakout restaurant, Beppe). He’s detoured to start an import company devoted to heirloom Tuscan beans (Republic of Beans), and served comfort-oriented “cowboy style” pastas and steaks at a short-lived West Village restaurant called Maremma. But several years ago, Casella joined forces with the Italian salumi purveyor Parmacotto to open the boutique Upper West Side establishment Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto. And with that, one of the city’s original, downtown Slow Food cooks transformed himself into an uptown chef, with a devoted new clientele, new upscale recipes, and a polished, even posh, new uptown style.

The Jerusalem artichoke (a.k.a. sunchoke) is neither from Jerusalem, nor an artichoke, although its similarly delicate, nutty flavor could account for the artichoke half of the misnomer. Seamus Mullen, the chef-owner of the Spanish gastropub Tertulia, in Greenwich Village, likes to serve fried sunchokes as an alternative to fried potatoes. “They have a wonderful sweet flavor, and when you fry them, the starch makes them extra crispy,” Mullen says. Think of the sumac-yogurt dressing as the sour cream of the dish: The coolness and acidity make a nice contrast with the hot, starchy ’chokes.