Cibo Matto

  If Mad Men was available on RAI, Italy’s version of AMC, one wonders how different Il Matto, the new Italian restaurant whose name means "the madman" and which sprung up in late June in Tribeca’s former Arqua space, might have been. Instead of channeling Lewis Carroll, Il Matto might have lapsed into the new clubby don draper aesthetic spreading like bedbugs through Manhattan’s dining rooms. Instead, Il Matto is a refreshing if frustrating bitches brew of pasta and audacity. This is an un-self-conscious italian version of the madman, good-natured and half-assed.  

One receives a glimpse of the madness to come in the logo of Il Matto in which the second "t" is backward facing. (Backwards letters as a hint of madness relegate russians and dyslexics to institutions, you know.) Second, third and fourth glimpses come hard on the heels of walking up the few steps into the high-ceilinged dining room. hot light-skinned African-American hostess? Standard operating procedure these days. But behind her are four large, upholstered teacup booths on castors. Supposedly they rotate—cast-offs from a bygone carnival?—but sadly, our hostess informed us, we could not play Alice tonight. the seats were reserved. Instead we were led through the largely empty dining room, past the empty teacups, under large parallelogram red-and-white Led chandelier to a small white table overlooking Let there Be Neon, one of tribeca’s last great stores. on the table sat two ceramic grenades: black was pepper, white salt.

The menu comes bilingual, a large piece of paper with gauche drawings of jam, octopi, avocadoes, roosters and cheerful fish on it. The man in the kitchen is a florentine named matteo Baglioni whose other restaurant, Gradisca, is one of those italian joints you never think of—the West Village equivalent of east 10th street’s Gnocco— that serves unpretentious better-than average food at modestly inflated prices.

Gradisca never struck me as particularly crazy. In fact, i remember it distinctively as a purveyor of unimaginative, if delicious, comfort food. But at Il Matto, Baglioni’s intentions are insanity, or the simulacra of insanity, while still being delicious. In this Baglioni is only partly successful. his menu provides flashes of brilliance and moments of madness but also an object lesson on the dangers of strangeness.

In Baglioni’s hands, the canonical Caprese salad is upended. the mozzarella di bufala becomes a soup ($15), the tomato transmogrified to a granita and the basil solidified into crispy croutons. It’s a clever idea but a little too much like lapping up a saucer of cream. What’s more, what appeared at the table bore only tenuous connection to what was written on the menu, a document itself that suffered from bilingual schizophrenia. Either Baglioni is being very meta here or someone’s doing a bad job of interpretation. There were no zucchini flowers—listed on the menu in italian but not in english—nor were the fried eggplant and avocado, both listed in english but not italian, immediately apparent. No mention was made either of basil-infused croutons, which were the best part of the soup. For the more intrepid or headlong, a braised pork belly app ($15) may or may not come with black olive honey, head-on shrimp, chickpea purée and raspberries. It’s cooking as a random-word association game, a stochastic kitchen.

As one ventures deeper into the menu, ingredients seem to regain some measure of sanity. And here Baglioni finds his greatest successes. the fazzoletti ($21), handmade handkerchief pasta, is made with black olives and stuffed with mozzarella which leaked orgasmically from its folds to mingle with fresh tomato sauce studded with fried eggplant bits. The only thing vaguely crazy in the dish was the dish itself, an asymmetrical bowl. And despite errors in execution—sallow crap, an anagram for raw scallop—and the unnecessary presence of yellow beets and a jism-esque almond foam, the black olive crusted sea scallop with roasted porcini mushrooms, yellow beets and almond milk foam ($25) balanced the earthy charm of the mushroom with the gently nautical tendresse of the scallop. A dessert, a delectable pecorino crème brûlée preceded by an ill-advised “shot” of frangelico cream with a sesame seed rim ($14), passed by with about as much madness as a midwest pastor.

In the end, Il Matto doesn’t live up to the promised insanity. Baglioni’s sober instincts as a chef get in the way of his imagination and that’s a mixed blessing. As we left the restaurant, I noticed to my dismay that only two of the teacup booths were occupied, but whether they were halffull or half-empty was open to debate.

-- Il Matto 281 Church St. (at White St.), 212- 226-1607.