Edition: U.S. / Global

RESTAURANTS; A Seasoned Team and Tuscany

By Marian Burros
Published: June 20, 2001

ON my first four visits to Beppe, I kept wishing the chef, Cesare Casella, would stop lavishing his attention on the patrons in the dining room and get back to the kitchen, where he needed to lavish attention on the cooks, who seemed bereft of the most basic skills: frying, roasting, boiling and seasoning.

Six weeks later, Mr. Casella must have come to the same conclusion. Last Wednesday night, he hardly appeared in the dining room and the flavors in his rustic Tuscan (and not so Tuscan) dishes, which had been sound asleep, were suddenly leaping off the plates.

The once-soggy fried chicken would now make a cook of the Deep South proud, and so would the fried green tomatoes that accompany it. The spareribs, previously flavorless, are spicy, meaty and tender, and the bed of bitter broccoli di rape provides a fine counterpoint to the richness of the meat. Menu description notwithstanding, cowboy-style they are not. Flabby French fries have become crisp, and taste as good as the wonderfully perfumed fried herbs that come with them. This time, the 11-herb pasta was perfectly cooked, and filled with the flavor of those herbs.

What never made any sense is why the chef wanted to spend so much time in the dining room. Tom Piscitello, the maître d'hôtel, and John Fanning, the general manager, are two of the best front-of-the-house restaurateurs in the business. They had worked with Mr. Casella when he was executive chef at Coco Pazzo in the early 90's. Mr. Casella's bona fides also include one Michelin star at Vipore, his grandparents' highly regarded restaurant in Lucca, Italy.

That's the reason I went to the restaurant five times, hoping that such experienced people, sooner or later, would catch on that they were not doing their best work. By the time I got there -- my first visit was six weeks after it opened -- more of the kinks should have been worked out. And even though they pulled out all the stops for us -- I have known the principals in the restaurant for years -- at first the food seemed more like the work of a newly minted cooking school graduate.

Proof, once again, that even if you are known in a restaurant there is only so much the kitchen can do. By the second visit, some edible dishes appeared. Today, Beppe, named for Mr. Casella's grandfather, is packed and worth a detour.

What has been right from the start is the comfortable rustic Tuscan room: exposed brick walls, wood beams, antique wooden floors and a wood-burning fireplace that is damped down in the summer. The pumpkin-colored walls are covered with large black-and-white photographs of Italians happily eating or making food. The bathrooms have what Mr. Fanning says are original Picasso drawings. (What would you do with Picassos, if your backer arrived with them one day and they didn't fit with the theme in your dining room?)

But is this really Tuscan food? Have tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches ever seen the inside of a Tuscan farmhouse? Even on focaccia? When was the last time Mama served fish simmered with lemon grass and ginger?

Tuscan-Asian? Italian-American? We'll settle for Mr. Casella's description -- free-range Tuscan. But he is at his very best with the Tuscan dishes. Order anything made with farro, the nutty whole grain, which is served in soup and as farrotto, a risotto-style dish that changes ingredients with the season. When ramps, those members of the onion family that can be detected from across the room (some say farther), were in season they flavored and perfumed the farro.

The warm seven-bean salad is stellar. Perfectly cooked beans -- purple, white and brown -- as big as your thumb and as small as a pea, are mixed with thinly sliced red onion and then bathed in a lusciously fragrant olive oil. The mussels are plump and sweet, ablaze with garlic and pepper.

Baby arugula is everywhere. Its delicate bitterness plays off the subtle earthiness of thinly sliced fresh porcini, accented by bits of sharp, salty pecorino. Lightly poached octopus, sliced to look like soppressata, is molded around a mound of the arugula and dressed with a piquant black-olive vinaigrette.

I have not retasted everything I tried in the beginning, so I hope the crust on the lamb pot pie can no longer double as a manhole cover, that the pork loin and quail have not had the life cooked out of them, that the couscous has less cinnamon in it. And while the butcher's spaghetti is nice, the spiciness the menu promises is still not there, and the black-eyed peas need another two minutes on the stove.

Two of the three dishes in a tomato plate should be fine-tuned. The tomato and mayonnaise sandwich needs a punchier mayonnaise and a tastier tomato, and the pappa al pomodoro, a tomato and bread soup, was bitter. But the panzanella, tomato and bread salad, was light, refreshing and suffused with flavor.

For this food you want a hearty wine, and there are good, reasonable choices.

Usually, Italians do better with their savories than with their sweets but the desserts at Beppe also play with Italian tradition to produce sweets appealing to the American palate. The cannoli are really rolled lace cookies, cigarillo width, filled with flavored mascarpone. The Tuscan riff on ice cream sandwiches is made with toasted buccellati, the Tuscan version of panettone; the fillings are deep chocolate, intense mint or creamy mascarpone.

Lemon soufflé cake is closer to a lemon cheesecake, and the sharpness of the transparently thin slices of glazed lemon and the acidity of the lemon sorbet play off the creaminess of the cheesecake. An all-American plum and cherry cobbler with the classic crumble topping and vanilla-bean ice cream is a must.

Let's hope that the Beppe of last Wednesday was not a fluke, and that Mr. Casella is on a permanent upward trajectory, reaching for the third star.


** [rating: two stars]

45 East 22nd Street; (212) 982-8422.

ATMOSPHERE: Warm, comfortable, attractively appointed in Tuscan style.

SOUND LEVEL: Noisy when full, but not ear-shattering.

RECOMMENDED DISHES: Antipasti, mussels, farro soup, 11-herb pasta, griddle pasta, farrotto, porcini salad, octopus and arugula salad, fried chicken, spareribs, seven-bean salad, Tuscan fries, peach crostata, cannoli, lemon soufflé cake, ice cream sandwiches, plum cobbler.

SERVICE: Friendly, knowledgeable.

WINE LIST: Interesting variety of Tuscan wines, well priced.

PRICE RANGE: Lunch and dinner, antipasti and soup, $7 to $12; pasta, $16 to $20; secondi, $23 to $29; dessert, $7 or $8.

HOURS: Lunch, Monday through Friday, 12 to 2:15 p.m. Dinner, Monday through Saturday, 5:30 to 11:30 p.m.

CREDIT CARDS: All major cards.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Wheelchair accessible.

What the stars mean:

(None) Poor to Satisfactory

* Good

** Very Good

*** Excellent

**** Extraordinary



Photo: RUSTIC, IN AN OFF-PARK AVENUE WAY -- Beppe has antique floors, wood beams and exposed brick walls. (Frances Roberts for The New York Times)