East Village Italian Empire ExpandsHaving already established a wildly successful Roman restaurant in Gnocco and an equally successful Italian wine bar in Perbacco, Modena native Gian Luca Giovanetti now wants to take on the East Village breakfast business. His Caffè Emilia, announced in this week’s Openings, is a narrow space (85 feet long and 9-and-a-half feet wide) filled with the kind of casual Emilia-Romagnan foods that Giovanetti thinks the neighborhood needs. The highlight of the menu is tramezzini, a kind of Italian club sandwich. “I never find it in New York,” he says. “It’s a sandwich with three layers of white bread, and we stuff it with original ingredients: caramelized onion with balsamic vinegar, tuna, shrimp, ham, artichokes, Fontina cheese.” The place will open at 8 a.m. and serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner — that last one becoming more important once Giovanetti gets his grill going.
Restaurant Openings: Hill Country, Caffè Emilia, and Park Avenue Summer [NYM]
Caffè Emilia menu
In the Magazine
Summer Brings Hot Dogs, Barbecue, and Department-Store Salads
Summer is upon us at last, and with it come the inevitable summer foods: hot dogs, barbecue, snap peas, salad … and pappardelle with truffles and butter. Well, not every food consumed in the hot months is inevitable. But this issue comes packed with hot-weather options. The Underground Gourmet reviews Willie’s Dawgs and PDT, the new chic cocktail lounge attached to Crif Dogs (you’ll have to read to understand). The city’s most ambitious barbecue opening yet happens this week; Gael Greene is very taken with Aurora Soho’s reverse commute; Pichet Ong takes off from the dessert business to create a killer sugar-snap-pea recipe; and Rob and Robin offer both a guide to the city’s top department-store salads and a quiz to determine your green-eats quotient, a test which only the most narrowly focused carnivore could possibly fail.
