A couple weeks ago Jenn made a 9:45pm reservation at I Cavallini in Brooklyn. I told her to use the bots to try to snag a prime time 8pm reservation, but when she hit refresh on Resy 14 days before, I guess the bots snatched up all the other reservations and she made a manual, hand picked, organically sourced reservation for 9:45pm.
So 9:45pm rolled around and it ended being everything I could ask for in a classic late New York City dinner. We walked in and the sound system filled the space like a warm hug. It was dark, dark enough that I had to use my phone’s screen light at 50% brightness (never the flashlight) to see through the menu.
I moved the candle around and committed a faux pas and put out the candle. Our server effortlessly pulled out a lighter from his back pocket and then we were back live with a flame. I looked at him in amazement, as if he had just landed some restaurant server equivalent of a backflip.
My photos of the meal are terrible and borderline unusable, so apologies in advance for that - I hope to make up for that with some prose:
Spicy bluefin tuna crostini with date butter
It feels like you see these premium mediocre raw tuna starters almost everywhere these days, but this one had a special touch - like how listening to a familiar song on a high end subwoofer brings out lows you’ve never heard before, the date butter brought out a richness to the typical crunch + tuna combo we’ve gotten all too used to. Date butter - 10/10!
Focaccia with whipped ricotta and leeks stufati
Warm bread and dip or butter is a requirement for me in any western meal. One of my friends (the same one with a fish guy) was recounting to me how he and his partner mostly eat rice, but at some point realized that his partner needs bread for energy. The line was something something like “White people need bread”. I’m not complaining, I love bread. The communal act of breaking bread together is a deeply human experience.
About a 5 minute walk away from I Cavallini is the cult favorite Popup Bagels, not famous, but known, for its rip and dip approach to fresh bagels and shmears and butters. This focaccia with whipped ricotta and leeks stufati was the polished, evening cousin of a Popup salt bagel with scallion schmear. The leeks stufati made this dish whole — when you can get whipped ricotta and bread at any standard Italian restaurant in NYC (la pecora bianca cough), I was happy that the leeks rounded this dish out and kept the second track of this dinner on par with the date butter — 8/10.
Malloreddus with royal red shrimp, corn, and uni butter
I have a confession to make. When I encounter a type of pasta that I don’t recognize, I usually try to order it for sake of exploration. But before I order it, I sneak out my phone to embarrassingly Google “how to pronounce [pasta]”. Years ago I ordered a Tagliatelle in Milan and said tag-lia-tell, and the server quickly corrected me: ah, yes, the tag-lia-tell-ay.
So I told to server that we would do the mah-low-reh-deuce, and the server repeated back to me, mah-low-reh-deuce, great choice, and then the malloreddus appeared on our table with zero faux pas committed.
The pasta was of course perfectly cooked with just the right amount of bite, with a consonance between the rich texture from the uni butter and the sweetness of the corn. I liked it, Jenn said it just tasted like luxury mac and cheese – 7/10. But IMO Jenn’s amber flag is that she hates pasta, so take that review with a literal grain of salt.
Snap peas with fennel, mint, and sarvecchio
This was served alongside the main star of the show, the grilled berkshire pork chop. To be honest I don’t remember that much about this other than the greens were necessary to balance out the meat. It was good, but nothing to inspire me to wax poetic. In retrospect I think I wished we would’ve gotten to try the chilled cucumbers with colatura di alici, but I’ll have to try that for my next visit. No rating - onto the main event:
Grilled berkshire pork chop with preserved cherry glaze
I originally wanted to get the lamb sausage, but then Jenn told me that on TikTok everyone was ordering the pork chop, that it was the item to get. I asked our server, and he confirmed that we would be foolish to not order the pork chop.
This has become a bit of a bit for me recently, where I feel like too much of your dining experience is pre-experienced by watching the TikToks or reels or reading reviews such that you know exactly what you are going to experience at each part of the meal. I remember being surprised at Adda in the East Village a couple months ago when they came out with chaat on trays, allowing you to add dishes for $5 as if you were at the baseball game passing cash over to the popcorn or cotton candy man. It’s awesome, and I was psyched when that happened. Jenn shared my excitement, but then said that she knew it was coming because she had watched the TikToks. So I try not to get too influenced by the clankers and algorithms when going into these kinds of experiences, because I think that social media is chipping away at our capacity to experience surprise in this world.
But I do think that you would be foolish to not order the pork chop. I’m not even going to try to describe the dish, yes, rich, yes tender, yes even a generous portion size, you’ll just have to experience it. And if you’re actually going to go, you’re probably going to be disappointed because now you have high expectations and those invariably high expectations are hard to meet. So maybe you should actually get the lamb sausage and let that surprise you.
Tiramisu
Imagine there’s a new promotion at Olive Garden where for dessert, they serve a special tiramisu. One server brings you the tiramisu, and another follows with a mascarpone machine:
“Mascarpone?”
“Yes please”
“Just tell me when to stop”
...
...
“Stop”
There’s no live Olive Garden style mascapone machine at I Cavallini, but it’s what I like to imagine happens in the kitchen when they prepare the tiramisu.
I was re-reading a wonderful piece from 2016 by one of my favorite writers, Gideon Lewis-Kraus in New York Times Magazine, about Google’s early artificial intelligence efforts with Google Translate. There’s this reference to the Google legend Jeff Dean:
“Jeff Dean got promoted to Level 11 in a system where the maximum level is 10.”
I Cavallini’s tiramisu is a mascarpone forward masterpiece. It has broken my scale, eleven out of ten.
Listening to a perfect album on vinyl
In the over-small-platification of restaurants and wine bars, some small plates restaurants can feel fragmented, like you’re listening to 4 different singles. But there’s a beauty to listening to an album start to finish, and an even richer experience to listen to that album on vinyl.
Dining at I Cavallini was like listening to a perfect album on vinyl, no skips. The cadence was executed perfectly - tuna crostini out within 2 minutes of ordering, followed by the focaccia with the malloreddus… then a bit of a break before getting the grilled berkshire pork chop and snap peas.
I Cavallini, and restaurants like it, give you the gift of an a la carte menu of singles, and assemble a cohesive album of a dinner. It’s spiritually closer to omakase than many of the new-age factory line, no kitchen needed, $95 omakase operations in New York City.
In an age of abundance and infinite access, well curated and hospitable experiences will only become more special. We can listen to all the world’s music on Spotify, yet our generation is increasingly preferring to flip through records at the store and enjoy the analog experience of vinyl.
I hope they share their playlist, because I was out there shamelessly shazaming every other song.
Thank you to the I Cavallini team for a wonderful and special meal, we’ll be back for that late tiramisu seating.
