Great pizzas and endearing style at Roberta’s in Bushwick. Photo: Steven Richter

        And then we’re there…heaven forbid.  Is this bombed out street the new Williamsburg?  Is this battered old garage the new chic? The ATM machine outside signals “cash only.” Well, maybe it isn’t the new chic but it is Roberta’s, designed around a real brick pizza oven with only a hot plate in the kitchen originally and now with ever increasing ambitions. House made duck prosciutto. Roasted marrow bones with citrus gremolata. Homemade tagliatelle in all this funk: strings of Christmas lights, cinder blocks, garbage finds hanging like treasures from the ceiling and outside, a shipping container cum radio station and soon, weather permitting, a kitchen garden.

The new Bohemians gather in their garage lair for pizzas and more. Photo: Steven Richter

        “This is the hottest place in Brooklyn,” our chauvinist borough pal announces.  “These are the new Bohemians, exiles from the gentrification of Williamsburg, forced to settle in Bushwick.”

        “They look like middle-class young people,” I protest. “Okay… I’ll accept that they’re artists and revolutionaries.”

The guanciale and egg pizza has the prerequisite bubbles and scorch.  Photo: Steven Richter

        By that point, already fallen victim to the exceptionally fine house-baked bread, we are sharing a fabulous pizza with the requisite blisters and scorch – and in the center, an egg cooked just enough to run sensuously over mozzarella, tomato and guanciale. The intense garlic and jalapeño hit of the Axl Rosenberg pie is captivating too, with mushrooms and sopressata sausage on and under molten mozzarella. There are nine designated pizzas (I plan to try Specken Wolf next time), from $7 for the Rosso to $18 for the double High Hat (or design your own from a list of 19 $1 to $3 options), but monster calzones are in demand too.

Half of a huge bird both crusty and juicy is just $14 at Roberta’s. Photo: Steven Richter

***

Eco(nomy)-Friendly Menu at Eighty One

A more generous portion of this spring risotto with peas and ramps wouldn’t hurt. Photo: Steven Richter

        I’m not sure what guru or muse guides Ed Brown on his own at Eighty One after two decades with Restaurant Associates. All of his fans – me among them – have been rooting for him, hoping he would survive the bad timing of launching his dream restaurant in a big and expensive space just as the economy started sinking.  I thought his $42 two-course bar menu and early-bird special was too feeble a bow to reality.  I suggested he throw in a sorbet but he said it wasn’t possible because his sorbets were $10. “How about just one scoop?"  I urged.  I have tried not to be a restaurant consultant.  But there, I’d done it.  Offered $5,000 worth of scorned advice.

        Months later, reality has inspired Brown to rethink the two-course dinner. It’s now priced at $30.81 and coyly offers a second appetizer for $8.10. Fussy friends are raving again.

        “Of course it does," he says.  So we’re off in a haze of indulgence, pricked briefly by the amuse bouche – a shot glass of thin and listless potato soup. I almost choke as its sprinkle of chocolate dust hits the back of my throat.  Ed’s night out, I decide.

How long has it been since double-stuffed baked potatoes? Great idea, Ed. Photo: Steven Richter

        Happily, the menu is a roll call of what we like to eat and most of what follows lives up to our expectations. The surprise intensity of mint in rich salmon belly tartare with radish and dill. Pea and ramp risotto signaling spring.  The earthy scent and pebbled texture of wild mushroom soup.  The punctuation of spring herbs elevates even a simple salad of baby lettuces.  Slow roasted chicken is crisp-skinned, full of flavor (too bad someone forgot to cook the chickpeas). Double-baked stuffed potato and barely wilted spinach are dividends with the hanger steak.  There’s enough pungent straw wine flavor in an intrinsically annoying foam to dress up the fine scallop ravioli. Too bad the carefully cooked salmon seems abandoned, unadorned, unrubbed, unseasoned. Is risotto so expensive the house can’t afford to send out a reasonable portion in a bowl rather than a shallow coating on a dinner plate? The soup is shallow too, as if the accountant measured and not the chef. Sides at just $6 are tempting, but I don’t understand macaroni and cheese in stickum sauce without even an attempt at a crust.

Bosc pear on us, sorbets and cookies on the house. Photo: Steven Richter

        “Is the caramel roasted Bosc pear really worth $12?” we ask.

45 West 81^st Street. 212 873 8181. Open Monday through Thursday, 5:15 to 10:30 pm, Friday and Saturday from 5:15 to 11:30.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Le Cirque’s salmon tartare is elegant and delicious. Photo: Steven Richter

        I carry a lot of baggage with me when I walk into Le Cirque.  So does our host tonight, market guru and journalistic mix master Dan Dorfman. It’s about the golden youth we shared with Sirio in his charismatic ringmaster days at the original Le Cirque on 65^th Street, the drama and whiplash of Le Cirque 2000 at the Palace, and now the denial and triumph in the graying of Le Cirque in the Bloomberg Building courtyard. A roller coaster of joy and angst over the years. I suspect many of Sirio’s pets and regulars feel that same bond of nostalgia, affection and regret. As for the critical me after 40 years of barbed pats and pans, tributes and lashings, the Insatiable Critic can’t help but feel empathy too. Human after all.  (Click here to read a vintage review, “I Love Le Cirque, But Can I Be Trusted?”) Still, I haven’t been by since Frank Bruni tossed off three stars and the chef was forced to exit a few weeks later. I’d not yet tasted the food of the new Australian chef  Craig Hopson.

This ladylike croque Monsieur is exactly what I want for dinner tonight. Photo: Steven Richter

        Is the hill of luscious lobster risotto heftier because it’s us?  I can’t say. All I know is the lobster is exquisitely cooked.  I’d be content any night with the Everest of salad panachée, and the sprightly curried salmon tartare inside its cucumber hedge has a welcome citrus edge that almost makes up for a lack of curry heat. I guess it’s not easy to put together discount entrees. If a dish is too exciting, you antagonize the timid diner. Most fish is expensive and pasta threatens the carbophobic, while an inoffensive trio like flounder, chicken breast and minute steak puts me to sleep. Minute steak?  How about flank, flap or skirt,  or… a lamb steak?  Anything but this thin chewy strip of cow.  I cheer myself up shopping the a la carte lounge menu by price, delighted with a $14 Caesar piled on a cheddar sable crust and a rather ladylike croque Monsieur with a toss of salad at $16. 

Just like old times, the kitchen sends extra desserts on monkey plates. Photo: Steven Richter

        Any disappointments are quickly forgotten as desserts arrive — a thin frisbee of an apple tart, splendid chocolate soufflé and the essential crème brulée.  This of course is the fragile custard under a crackle of glaze that launched the craze.  It is supposed to be delicate. “Too thin,” writes a misguided complainant on Yelp, obviously accustomed to dense and clumsy imitations.

***            

Pino Does It His Way

Oven-baked calamari is a Centolire classic. Photo: Steven Richter

        If you live around the corner, you might come for the pastas. Pino Luongo’s cash-panicked Upper East Side fans are piling into the tiny cramped downstairs entry at Centolire that he has restyled as Centolire Café and Panini. Even those who Madoff rejected are here stretching out flattened retirement funds. They stuff themselves in their fine custom cut suits and Ralph Lauren waspiness into tiny scarred-top tables that don’t let you cross your legs under them, laughing, lingering, keeping a close eye on that Gucci satchel under the chair, the next table two inches away. The waiter hands you the upstairs menu.  You have to ask for the new Café roster: soups and salads $7.50 to $8.50, pastas $10.50 or less, sandwiches $6 to $9.50.

        “Excuse me,” she says.

        “What waiter?  We haven’t seen him for a long time.”

Pino’s lazy bread salad is not the panzanella I know and love.  Photo: Steven Richter

        No one at our table but me likes the soft gnocchi Romana with its pleasant, fresh-tasting tomato sauce. Certainly perfectly cooked asparagus with soft egg and prosciutto on sliced bread would be a fine lunch. Unfortunately “porchetta” with fennel on ciabatta comes on sliced bread too.  “Where is the ciabatta?” I ask.  The waiter stares me down. And it’s ham, not porchetta, impossible to eat without a knife and fork to cut the fennel. The frisee salad tastes like someone forgot the olive oil.  Or is that a deliberate economy? As for “Panzanella (bread salad), My Way” – barely dressed chopped vegetables on toast passed off as bread salad – it’s definitely not my way!  Why is the $8 dessert of the day $12.50 on our bill?  “You’re right,” says the waiter when we reel him in.  “I’ll fix it.”

Is this dessert of the day $12.50 or $8?  The waiter corrects the bill. Photo: Steven Richter

1167 Madison Avenue on the southeast corner of 86^th Street. 212 734 7711. Open Monday to Friday 11 to 11 in the cafe and upstairs from 12 to 3 pm for lunch and 5:30 to 10:30 at dinner; Saturday hours are the same as weekdays, but they stay open till 11 pm; Sundays close at 10 pm in the cafe and 9 pm upstairs (opening and lunch hours are the same).