Misi
Everybody is calling Missy Robbins’ new venture a pasta restaurant, “but that’s not quite right,” said Pete Wells in The
New York Times. Misi also works wonders with vegetables and gelato—its only dessert option. The menu, in short, “has been distilled down to essentials,” thereby improving on her acclaimed formula at Lilia, her previous flagship. Pasta remains her calling card. “Robbins likes hers to have body and heft,” and here, in a new building with views of the Williamsburg Bridge, she has a glass-walled, temperature-controlled workspace that she and her team use exclusively for daily noodle making. Whatever the shape, each pasta becomes a perfect vehicle for simple, unmanipulated ingredients: lightly cooked tomatoes, anchovies, and garlic; mascarpone and spinach. “Like the pastas, Misi’s vegetables tend to bring together only a few ingredients, often applied in ways you don’t quite expect.” The lightly pickled chanterelles are showered with rosemary, and lemony roasted eggplant is dressed with Calabrian chiles. The wine list, meanwhile, “practically begs you to take something new for a whirl.” To review, then: pasta, vegetables, wine, gelato. “What more, really, do you want?” 329 Kent Ave., (347) 566-3262 dinner in Rome, “and apparently in
Detroit too,” said Mark Kurlyandchik in the Detroit Free Press. At least that’s true at SheWolf, “a nightly exaltation of Italian culture with a raucous New American streak.” Open since June and “easily Michigan’s most nationally relevant Italian restaurant,” the so-called pastificio occupies a modernist jewel-box space in Cass Corridor and runs on chef Anthony Lombardo’s playful, deliberately ItalianAmerican take on Roman fare. Housemilled flour elevates the breads and pastas, and “by and large the pastas are a textural delight,” outshone only here and there by the menu’s seafood offerings. The acqua pazza, a wild red snapper filet in a spicy broth, was “one of the best things I’ve eaten all year,” and most meals—despite