Neapolitan dining legend now offers its stylish fare and ambiance locally
Patsy's opened last year. (photo by nick valinote)
Naples, Italy's largest city south of Rome, was also the primary port from which most immigrants to the New World disembarked.
So it only makes sense that Neapolitan cuisine -- an amalgam of pastas, native vegetables, tomato-based sauces and the bounty of the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea -- should have found an appreciative audience in New York, where many of those travelling Italians would up by the middle of the last century.
Patsy's restaurant, a Neapolitan dining legend in America's biggest metropolis since 1944, now offers its stylish fare and ambiance locally at Atlantic City's Hilton.
Plenty of room exists between tables, encouraging conversation, and perhaps, for those so inclined, romance.
Servers are a gracious, experienced lot, constantly aware of their customers needs and anticipatory, without becoming intrusive.
Our meal began with the evening's soup, rich minestrone delivered in grand fashion with a sterling silver cover. This serves both the obvious ornamental purpose as well as being practical, maintaining the steaming liquid at just the right temp.
Filled with diced onion, carrot, celery, shredded cabbage, beans and tomato in a golden broth, this light take was just the right touch for a meal on the first full day of spring.
My appetizer, a stuffed artichoke heart, was similarly delivered in a wide bowl with a bit of the natural juices accompanying. What we really appreciated here was the offering of a discard dish, in the same manner as is common with shell-on seafoods, allowing us to scrape the delicious outer leaves and then be easily rid of them.
The stuffing, a smooth blend of breadcrumbs, sliced black olives, garlic, capers and anchovy, also provided the requisite levels of salt and seasoning necessary.
Dark green and impeccably fresh, the artichoke's inner folds were fork-tender and luscious. We're guessing that this most favored vegetable of Italians was boiled or steamed to begin the cooking process, keeping moist, then filled with that savory stuffing and finished in a low-roasting oven.
The result was a complex, meal-like portion, rewarding diners for digging within to locate that amazingly soft treasure of a center.
The directory of entrees at Patsy's is long and thorough. Touching on all the standard items one would expect from southern Italy, it then adds the unique -- like traditional tripe stew and two different liver recipes.
We chose one item from the pasta section, a trio of ravioli: lobster, spinach and mushroom. With two huge, outsized stuffed diamond shapes of each, the plate was artfully conceived into a pretty, overlapping geometric design.
The raviolis were ladled with multiple sauces, starting with a light cream for the lobster. While all three options were expertly prepared, these, brimming with the world's most expensive crustacean, stood out as the leading player.
As with the former Atlantic City Hilton (currently dubbed simply ACH), the Vegas Hitlon is owned by the investment group Colony Capital LLC, "a pioneer among private-equity investors that gambled big on casinos starting in the 1990s, before its luck recently went cold," according to the WSJ report.
Chef Sal says: "Everyone will be getting a cookbook and a jar of Pasty’s sauce as part of the admission to the event. You have the food, you have the singing, and you have the dancing. It will be a wonderful night.”
Patsy’s Italian Restaurant at the Atlantic City Hilton will host a book party for Sal Scognamillo, head chef and co-owner of Patsy’s Atlantic City and the original Patsy’s in New York City, Frank Sinatra’s favorite Italian restaurant.
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