Gross Food Week #4: The Hungry Ghost Bakery, Northampton, MA

In planning out my selections for Gross Week, I initially thought it would be overkill to include a restaurant in an undoubtedly negatively centered theme. However, after trying the pizza at The Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton, Massachusetts, all bets are off. To some Northamptonites, this review will strike the wrong chord. They will place it in the same shock category as a "Nobama" bumper sticker. The Hungry Ghost, a two-time James Beard semifinalist, is a small town staple atop a small hill in the center of town, flanked by office buildings and groceries just off the main drag. When I first came here for school, it was all everyone spoke about.
"Oh, you must try the Ghost- they only bake one kind of specialty bread a day and don't bake any more when they run out! The owner wrote a ballad about the bakery! They have a schedule for their bread." Handwritten menus and a shabby workspace pass for status indicators in this area, I noticed. In fact, I entered the bakery twice prior to their late 2011 renovation and left before ordering as I was appalled with the putrid state of conditions there. Formerly a dusty, dank bakery, albeit one with lovely smells, the reviews of The Hungry Ghost's bread range from passionate to pallid. But it was their recent renovation and switch to pizza that piqued my curiosity one evening, prompted by an October 2011 review by Serious Eats writer Liz Bomze, when the bakery had first branched out to pizza. I'm not one to place SE on a pedestal, but I respect their input and recognize their experience in eating many different types of pizza, so their range of comparison would be vast and hopefully serve as a good benchmark for my own experience.
What Liz described as "some of the best pizza in New England" was something I wouldn't have the heart to feed my dog. (Who, for the record, was raised on New Haven apizza crusts slipped under the table.) Perhaps this would pass for good pizza to someone who was heretofore fed exclusively Domino's and Digiorno, but for a Connecticut resident, this barely has the life and character of a freezer-burnt Ellio's. Entering the bakery, we were the only patrons yet stood for a few minutes as the cashier finished a lengthy conversation about boys with a friend of hers. When we made a motion to order and ask for a recommendation, as it was our first time checking the place out, it was made painfully clear that the delicate rhythm of the discourse was disrupted by our presence. This was reflected in the service. Hideously annoyed that her soliloquy about menfolk was stopped in its tracks, the cashier was surly, exhibiting a vapid passivity nearing autistic levels, thrusting a paper menu toward us and all but telling us to go screw ourselves. Any further requests for recommendations yielded blank stares and eye rolls.
We finally agreed to try their margherita pizza, a basic set of flavors that, when done well, transport the eater back to summertime. A simple choice for a first time. Informed that the pizza would take twenty minutes to cook, a strangely long time in a brand new Llopis wood-fire oven, we were told to come back. We perused a local deli and returned only to be informed that the bakery was cash-only. No signage alerted us to this fact, nor did our server choose to capitalize on our twenty minute wait by offering up this fact. Thus, our pizza was delayed another ten minutes as we found an ATM per her vague directions and went on our way.
That ten minutes made no difference at all. In fact, I doubt ten seconds would have made a difference, because this pizza was abhorrent both hot and cold. For starters, the composition. A margherita pizza is retardedly simple: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and a little extra virgin olive oil. Our pizza had rivulets of grease pocking its surface and running down the sides and into the crust and was sparse in the basil department. Apparently there's a shortage of skimpy, free-range basil leaves in the region. Fresh tomatoes were replaced with what tasted like canned tomato sauce, and the cheese was barely browned. Checking out the upskirt, we were once again dismayed by the shoddy performance of this seemingly new oven. I'm not sure if the owners got an upcycled oven or if it was left on the curb and posted on freecycle, but it yielded a flaccid, soggy crust with a gummy interior, each piece collapsing on itself, saturated and glistening with more oil than a male model and shedding dandruffy flakes of cornmeal and flour when moved from box to plate.
The first few bites of each slice were wet, thick, and slimy, the result of the copious amounts oil migrating to the center of the pie. With each bite, I was waiting for International Bird Rescue to come clean my mouth in the same way oiled seagulls are cleaned after a disaster. $13 bought an extremely bland, oversweetened twelve inch pizza that left a sheen on our lips and carried a pervasively annoying sourdough tang, more tangy and sour than their bread. I've suffered from heartburn with a more nuanced flavor than this.
Unfortunately, Jesus did not grace our grease-stained napkin with His presence. He must have seen our pitiful meal and appeared in the craggy crust of a McNugget across the street instead.
An undistinguished and frugally filled alfajore did not make for a delightful end to the meal.
We had structured our day around getting this pizza tonight. I'm just pleased that we didn't go "full pizza" and snag more than one pie or even upgrade to a larger size. This was so unappetizing that we didn't even bother to sit down at the table with it, much less open the bottle of Mondavi we'd left chilling for the occasion. From the many Bret Easton Ellis novels and old issues of the New Yorker I've perused, I gather that high-end restaurants of the 80's were proud of being stingy and standoffish, cultivating the type of clientele who would know better than to question the difference between ceviche and cilantro. I don't, however, understand why this snobby "value" is superimposed onto the more mediocre examples of fine dining I've seen in small towns. It seems like a certain strain of naive people equate this attitude with quality dining, and it unfortunately causes restaurants like this to thrive where they can be king of the college pizza scene. Hungry Ghost comes across as a ludicrously arrogant big fish in a small pond. The hype is not deserved.

wd~50, New York, NY

My absence for the last few days hasn't so much been a byproduct of business as it's been a complete suspension of my personal gustatory reality. This week, I ate vegetarian sandwiches that tasted like meat, drank wines with the aromas of flowers, barnyards, and musk, and willingly downed not one, but nearly two large portions of tender, chewy woodear mushrooms, my own personal Kryptonite, in ecstasy and without any pretense of betting. This last fact alone proves that Chef Wylie Dufresne of wd~50 isn't so much mad scientist, as diners have noted, so much as he is a benevolent wizard of cuisine. But I'll get back to that.

This has been on my bucket list for a while. When Miss Love offered to treat me to dinner, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. As we drove to the restaurant, situated on Clinton street across a check cashing kiosk and Mexican grocery store, I was kind of wondering if I'd be hitting the end of that bucket list sooner than I thought. wd~50 looks completely different on the inside, and from the throngs of well-dressed people and scarily attractive clientele milling around the restaurant, it's clear that the restaurant has many admirers despite its location. On a balmy evening, we started off our night with a few cocktails.

We ordered two specialty cocktails from their list- a wd~50 classic, the Green Hornet, with celery gin and tonic, and a seasonal selection, the aptly named ¿Qué Pasa, Calabaza? with tequila, squash, yuzu, and black salt. The Green Hornet was an excellent interpretation on an old standard. Drinking it becomes apparent that this is not the place where sticking a stalk of celery in a G 'n' T passes for a quality libation. It infuses all the sweet brininess of a celery stick into a drink with none of the pesky starchy xylem, working impeccably with the spices in the gin.

The ¿Qué Pasa, Calabaza? was a perfect play off the weather outside, with a very Halloweeny black and orange color scheme and a light, fruity flavor and fragrant nose. The yuzu crept in at the end of each sip, its subtle influence rendering a citrusy zest without the tartness that a lemon would typically impart. The richness of the squash was beautiful with the naturally yogurty flavor of the tequila. If there was any one element I was somewhat on the fence about, it would have been the salt. While a little was welcomed, there was quite a bit on the rim of the drink. Consuming too much salt in one sip overpowered the more delicate flavors.

While drinking, we enjoyed a box of crisp sesame flatbread in lieu of a bread basket. These had a buttery flavor and delicate texture of the crunch of popcorn husks without the annoying tooth-sticking quality. They provided a good neutrality in between dishes.

Here at Foodette, we go big and go home sloshed, so we went for the full tasting menu with the wine pairings. We started off with an amuse bouche of fluke, black garlic paste, grapefruit, toasted squash seeds, and pomegranate zest. This was an excellent way to start the meal, with a light texture yet bold flavors with the tobacco-like sweetness of fall. The crunch from the squash seeds and silky garlic sauce offset the acidity of the grapefruit and gave depth to the mild fish.

This was paired with a sparkling sake from Yamagata, Japan, which our server explained was basically regular sake made with unpolished rice, made using the méthode champenoise with a light petillance and familiar sake neutrality. It allowed the flavors of the amuse bouche and second course to shine without clashing and was a great way to ease into the meal.

Our second course was the driving force behind my desire to come here, Dufresne's famous everything bagel ice cream with crispy cream cheese, fuzzy smoked salmon threads, and pickled onions. The presentation was stunning, from the matte sheen on the brittle shard of cream cheese to the airbrushed baking marks on the bagel and precisely placed sesame and poppy seeds. It was beautiful, if ephemeral, and had a sweet, bready quality and silky texture.

Next, we waited for our third course while enjoying our second wine, a 2008 Austrian "Trie" Triebaumer from Burgenland. It is worth noting that if you're friendly to your server, you'll leave with a slew of new facts about the fascinating library of wines wd~50 pairs, as well as a fairly generous pour with each new glass. This particular wine was a combination of unoaked Chardonnay, Yellow Muscat, and Muskat Ottonel, three wines that made me cringe inwardly in anticipation of the sugar shock that never came. For a trio of typically unctuous wines, this was a fairly restrained example, with a cloudy color and floral heavy, bone dry flavor that played nicely with the next course.

This was another curiosity, Wylie Dufresne's play on a falafel, taking the "fa" and replacing it with "foie" in a melty, buttery ball of joy nestled inside a thick, chewy pita bread. The foie-lafel consisted of foie gras balls rolled in chickpeas and sesame seeds, fried inside a pita with kimchi tahini and a tabouleh salad underneath. While absolutely delightful to hold and eat, the two unusual elements, kimchi and foie gras, were buried under the pungency of the Middle Eastern spices and showed only their most basic forms in a slight piquancy for the former and fatty, rich quality for the latter. A clever interpretation, and a delicious one, but one that unfortunately missed the mark as far as idiosyncrasy went.

Our next wine followed a similar suit with the 2009 Palmina "Subida" from the Saint Ynez Valley of California. This wine was created in a similar style to red wines from the same producer, and had a beautiful basil and nut flavor with a dusty nose and a yellow hue rivaled only by the luxurious center of our next course, Dufresne's interpretation of a Caesar Salad with a perfectly soft-boiled egg orbited by dried pumpernickel crisps, lily bulb, caesar dressing, and its own shell, recreated out of edible kaolin clay and brown butter. Flavor-wise, not the most outgoing, but the texture was seamlessly similar to an actual solid egg shell.

The udon dish completely turned my world upside down. Completely. Granted, I had my chance to pussy out at the start when the server asked about food allergies, but I decided that if I took my chances and ate mushrooms, it would be at the hands of one of America's most talented magicians of morsels, and I would go down like a champ. Turns out I didn't have to go anywhere. In a rare feat of bravery, this was so delicious that I ate all of mine and most of Keepitcoming's. At its simplest, this dish mimics the textures and flavors of crispy General Tso's chicken on a bed of chow mein. At its most daring, this was a melange of beautiful moist textures and sweet flavors. Surprisingly, mushrooms make pretty damned good noodles, sopping up the gingery sauce yet remaining firm. This was topped with soft morsels of crispy fried sweetbread. The only element that I felt could have been richer and more pervasive was the banana molasses, reduced to a mere glaze atop the sweetbread and lacking the smokiness I typically associate with the sauce.

We were absolutely smitten with the 2010 Gamay "Mon Cher" Noella Moratin. It had the gamey, rustic qualities of its varietal, with a persistent and strong lily nose, with floral top notes and a deep, bretty, almost human-like base scent, of barnyards and wet leather. It reminded us of vintage French perfumes with an old-fashioned set of scents and flavors. It added a svelte layer of grassy sweetness to the udon that the molasses lacked.

A tender, perfect piece of salmon was paired with a root beer oatmeal, sour cherry mash, and carrot. The oatmeal absorbed the snappier, minty essences of sassafras with a firm bite from the kernels and tasted fine against the mild flavor of the salmon, but both had very separate flavors and never really met in the middle. The cherry mash electrified the salmon and really boosted its natural sweetness better than the oatmeal. The carrot's flavor was nowhere to be found.

We drank a 2010 Pinot Noir from Wilson Daniels with this as well as our next course, though I must confess that at this stage, the generous pours were getting to me and if the wine wasn't off the charts exceptional and memorable, it didn't really stick in my head. This was one of the more generic selections of the pairing, with a mild licorice and cherry flavor and scent.

Our next savory course consisted of a tender filleted duck breast dotted with blobs of nasturtium yogurt, roasted turnips, and nutmeg. The nasturtium yogurt was the most unique part of the dish, with a thick, pasty texture and tang similar to hot Chinese mustard but no heat. On top of the duck and countered by the rooty turnips, it was delicious, if a little rich for us at that point.

The final savory course of the evening, (which, at that point, had passed the two and a half hour mark) was a riff off rice and beans with lamb and chayote squash. A very Southwestern vibe emitted from the spices on the "rice and beans," which were really soft, soaked pine nuts and a rice crisp. The lamb was cooked to perfection, but had a little too much fat left on. I liked the sweet, apple-like flavor the chayote lent to each bite. Cut in translucent strips, it curled around the fork, wrapping the fillings up like a nouveau American sushi roll.

We transitioned to the dessert portion of the menu with a strange little palate cleanser of candied egg yolk, brown buttermilk ice cream, jackfruit, and crushed hazelnut pieces. The dish toed the line delicately between savory and neutral, with a hint of sweetness and rush of acidity from the jackfruit. The egg yolk and jackfruit were both bright yellow in hue and the yolk had a milky, creamy flavor but was difficult to discern in each bite. The crunch of the toasted hazelnuts gave a good structural depth to the otherwise dairy-heavy dessert.

And then, we were in full-throttle sugar mode. It was awesome. The apricot, buckwheat, quince, and green tea dessert lent a range of flavors to the plate, at first resembling a set of components not unlike certain Rieslings, but with more colorful flair and less balance on the whole. The apricot pudding had an excellent texture, but its tartness mirrored that of the quince and pushed the subtle salinity of buckwheat to the back burner. The green tea powder was piled and squiggled in a way that made each bite somewhat inconsistent. Some had a mere whiff of bitterness, some, overly chalky as a result of too much powder.

Our wine with that was a beautiful Vermont ice cider, a "Honeycrisp" from Champlain Orchards. It was beautiful and smooth, with a honeyed, brown sugar flavor and ripeness of a baked apple.

We followed that wine with our final dessert and dessert wine, a Californian NV Port, the "Lot Number Three" Marietta. This was a beautiful and lush selection with a chocolatey, sundried flavor that reminded me of liquified Raisinettes. I drank both our ports with our final dessert.

This last dessert was another Dufresne favorite, the beet, ricotta, chocolate, and long pepper Pollack-inspired edible painting. I could have eaten the ricotta ice cream by the gallon, it was so tangy and delicious, with a flavor similar to, but wholly different than yogurt and cheese. It definitely had the silky, salty bite of ricotta. The beets imparted less of a flavoral difference than I expected, but accentuated the saltiness of the ice cream and provided a gorgeous color palate. For me, the chocolate was the highlight of the dish, with a fluid, semisolid texture and elastic smoothness in the mouth. A perfect way to finish the meal.

With our check came balls of ice cream coated in Rice Krispies and fried balls of a lemony rice pudding. Poppable and sweet, they helped soak up a good deal of booze for the ride back.

I got the sense that wd~50 didn't rest all its deconstructed eggs in one basket. Their food was delicious, and their service was impeccable. Each element of the meal felt like it was executed and timed well. Considering that the meal lasted for a little around three and a half hours, it never felt like it was dragging or like we were forgotten. While I can't say that the meal was perfect- a few of the dishes did feel like they were presented for shock value with less regard for flavor than expected, it was certainly memorable and beautiful. I'll definitely be coming back to check out the dessert tasting and to try a few more of those cocktails.

San Matteo Panuozzo, New York, New York

I know most of you already know this, but to some, it may come as a bit of a culture shock. Olive Garden is not Italian cuisine. I'm a quarter Italian. Keepitcoming is half. True to my blasphemous self, I'm admittedly quite happy when I'm noshing on pasta laden with thirty kinds of cheeses or a thick piece of reheated pizza oozing with oil, but Miss Love is harder to please. When Birra Moretti offered us the chance to enjoy pizza and beer in Manhattan, we couldn't help but oblige. We chose a small cafe on the Upper East Side, San Matteo Panuozzo, a squat cafe filled with wine bottles, speakers blaring Raphael Gualazzi (Italy's answer to Michael Buble) and housing a massive wood-fire pizza oven in the back- no small feat for a restaurant the size of your average Manhattan studio. Owned by brothers Ciro and Fabio Casella, the restaurant is just over a year old.

In the vast, dense world of New York pizza, I can proudly say this is some of the tastiest I've had the pleasure to sample. Then again, I'm a Connecticut native, so take my words at face value. But I've traveled around Italy, and eating this brought back memories of the flat, fragrant, chewy pizzettes offered in cafes all around the country. This is definitely the closest to authentic Italian pizza I've had since voyaging abroad, where the toppings are applied in an almost scientific sense, in moderate and careful doses across the dough- a personal favorite with a charred, chewy crust and moist interior. Despite taking a back seat to the restaurant's signature specialty, the panuozzo, the pizzas are not to be ignored. We tried two, the Arechi, with roasted butternut squash and smoked buffalo mozzarella, and the Salsiccia e Friarielli with broccoli rabe, Italian sausage, and mozzarella made fresh daily by Fabio himself. Each pizza carried an ample amount of toppings, yet not so much that the crust was overwhelmed, and was crispy and charred on the undercarriage, a cross between my beloved New Haven pizza and the soft Manhattan slices, and were cut into four pieces. Personally, I found these a hair too large and deceptively filling, but hearty and rustic to behold.

We ate all of these with Birra Moretti, an Italian pale lager dating back to 1859. For me, an ever-ambivalent beer taster, this was a fantastic choice to pair with our pizzas. It transitioned seamlessly from the smoky pizza to the sweet, rich panuozzo, with a strong, forward flavor and a clean finish. And with that, I have exhausted my knowledge and capacity to describe beer.

Of these two pizzas, we were smitten with the Arechi, with its host of comforting, autumnal flavors. I was initially afraid that this would be a drier pizza with chunks of cheese and pieces of squash scattered haphazardly, but the comingling of flavors was so much more complex than that. Acting in lieu of sauce, the squash was pureed on top, absorbing a dual layer of charred smokiness from the natural smoke in the cheese and the crispy crust below, with rich natural sugars from the vegetable and a sweet, underlying smokiness. The cheese provided even more meaty flavor, with a creamy texture and stringy consistency. Speaking as a self-proclaimed meatatarian, I'd give up pepperoni for this any day of the week. It executed the perfect combination of flavors typically associated with the season of fall and left a lingering, sweet flavor in the mouth long after each bite.

Our second pizza was a more classic favorite, sausage and broccoli rabe. Compared to the slew of flavors represented in the Arechi, this was a more understated and seemed to lack the delicate balance of proportions of the former. The homemade mozzarella was an absolute joy to eat, with a creamy, firm texture and a slight salinity. This was a good pizza, but didn't strike me as artful as the first. There were a few textural components that didn't seem to work as well with the crisp crust- the broccoli rabe was plentiful, yet exuded a significant amount of moisture that soaked through the crust. The sausage was also tender, yet moist, which contributed to the somewhat slippery nature of the slices. The flavor was tasty, with the earthy, bitter greens cutting through the spices in the sausage, but was subdued overall, and left us longing for a small shake of red pepper flakes or a few slices of hot pepperocini to remove some of the flatness.

We also had the pleasure to sample one of San Matteo's flagship entrees, a pork panuozzo. The panuozzo is a sandwich native to the town of Gragnano, near Napoli, and is a beautifully executed cross between a plump panino and a calzone, made from a loaf of fresh pizza dough quickly baked in their pizza oven, whisked out immediately after cooking, and stuffed with fresh toppings. Ours included house-roasted pork, more homemade mozzarella, and arugula microgreens.
This is no ordinary sandwich. For starters, it weighs about three pounds and contains roughly four regular sandwiches' worth of filling. The pork slices are massive and put Boar's Head to shame, with a thick, tender middle and addictively crispy strings of skin curling around the outside of each piece. The tender greens added an element of crispy bitterness to the sandwich and the mozzarella bound the entire sandwich together around the crispy, fluffy sandwich dough. What a phenomenal thing to eat. We each finished one of the four slices and took the rest home. Speaking from the point of view of the person who ate the remaining two slices for both lunch and dinner yesterday, this panuozzo got better each time I bit into a thick, savory slice. If I had my druthers and my stocks tied up in Hathaway A, I'd have one of these shipped in every day for lunch.

We ended our meal with two fresh cheeses imported from Italy and a delicious espresso. Fabio, who also works as an Italian foods importer, assured us that these cheeses, a fresh ricotta and burrata, were as fresh as we could get. Nobody doubted him. The burrata released a creamy midsection out of a firm outer shell of chewy cheese with a salty, creamy flavor and a tender consistency. The ricotta stole the show, though, molded and densely packed into an upright shape far different from its wet, calzone-filled counterpart. This ricotta was our favorite, and with its light, crumbly texture, made a tempting proposition as a stand-alone meal spread atop our pizza crusts. After, we were simply too full to partake in any additional confection, but if a treat had been offered with this ricotta as a key component, I would have found some room in my stomach.

With a traditional espresso bidding us farewell into the balmy night, we left San Matteo Panuozzo with full stomachs and beaming smiles, dreaming of the leftovers of the present and dinners of the future. Again, I know I'm not the be all, end all word on New York pizza, but trust me on this one, this is the place to go when you want to feel like you're eating in a gentler, kinder city. It doesn't get friendlier or more intimate than this.

The Stockade Tavern, Kingston, NY

Food is wonderful, but old food is better. Not old in the sense of refrigerated cheese of questionable origin, but old in the unattainable, just out of reach allure of time's fleeting passage. Pre-McRib release old. Original formula Coca-Cola, now with real cocaine. Hershey's candy bars before chocolate flavoring became the norm. It seems that the foods of yore, simply because they're no longer around, are so much more desired than what's in front of us. The same could be said for cocktails, but like classic Jell-O salad recipes, many of them have simply faded away with the times. At Stockade Tavern in Kingston, NY, they're preserving the essence of these vintage cocktails with a selection of curious drinks spanning over a century's worth of red cheeks and stumbling, from 1806 to 1938. We checked it out last night with some friends and reported our drunken findings.

With a beautiful pressed tin ceiling and a friendly Standard Poodle greeting visitors, we made our way in. The Stockade boasts a selection of crazy drinks, all pre-World War I libations with funky ingredients and even funkier names. We ordered a selection of drinks, as well as a few sweet nibbles after dinner. Special cravings for the next time around included a Guadalajara, which I'd be ordering to work up the nerve to ask my girlfriend if I could take her down to Mexico- tequila, Fernet-Branca, agave syrup, mole bitters, and orange oil, or the Pink Stag, with horseradish vodka and tomato water forming a more masculine, nastier Bloody Mary. Regardless of the era of these drinks, they will really, really, really fuck you up. Honest to god.

We sampled four of these, two from the classic cocktail section and two from the vintage cocktails. Keepitcoming Love tried The Aqueduct, an original invention with vodka, Cointreau, apricot brandy, and lime juice. While booze heavy, it was tasty, but not incredibly lifechanging or mood-altering one way or another. We were hoping it would have more influence from the apricot, but mainly tasted sweet and tart from the lime juice and vaguely citrusy. Our friend D had a classic Mai Tai. One of the tastiest I've had, mainly because it was potently strong with a killer bite.

Our vintage cocktails were quite well-prepared, not that we'd tried any to compare it to. I tried their singular egg white cocktail, a Ramos Gin Fizz, from 1888, with a slew of ingredients practically designed to make it easy on the palate. With Beefeater Gin, cream, lemon and lime juice, egg white, orange flower water, and simple syrup, I expected it to be the adult equivalent of a milkshake. It was lighter than I expected, with a frothy texture from the egg white and a feminine set of flavors that I imagined set many a young lady giggling in days of yore, but unfortunately was bogged down with the rich dairy ingredients, masking the floral and citrusy flavors. Our last vintage selection was the Pendennis, from 1883, similar to the Aqueduct in that it utilized apricot brandy and lime juice, but swapped out the vodka for gin and the Cointreau for Peychaud's bitters. This combination worked in its favor, and the sweet dried stonefruit flavors were much more prominent and deep in the cocktail, aided by the spices in the gin with a natural sweetness. Very seductive.

We nibbled on a few nightly specials, including a grilled apple cider doughnut and a bowl of dark chocolate covered Corn Nuts with jalapeno dust, an addictive bar peanut alternative for sweet teeth. The doughnut wasn't really affected by the grilling. Its sweet, sugary interior maintained its flavor and didn't absorb as much smoke as we'd originally anticipated. The outside was crispy and had a nice char from the grilling, but just seized up with a tough crustiness rather than taking on any woodsy or smoky flavors. Still delicious, and it sopped up all the booze we'd been drinking!

The other snack we had blew the standard pub mix right out of the water. Never again will I chomp stale miniature pretzels or salty peanuts again. These corn nuts were covered in dark chocolate and jalapeno dust, a tasty coating that added a bit of sweetness to the corn nut pieces. Unfortunately, the jalapeno dust was merely another layer of salt to contend with, and imparted absolutely no heat even when eaten in succession. The eating multiple corn nuts in a row was purely for experimental purposes, of course. While heat, sweet, and salt would have been ideal, they were quite tasty on their own. It's a pleasant surprise to see a mignardises-style munchie with a cocktail, and it would be fun to see if there were other flavors to pair together. Candied pieces of jalapeno come to mind as a good snack, as do pieces of sweet candied bacon. Mmm. I wonder if there are any vintage bar snacks that have come and gone with the times? Something I'd be curious to find out. Overall, the drinks and food were more hit or miss than utter bliss, but it was better than a regular bar and made Beefeater fun again.

Ballo Italian Restaurant and Social Club at Mohegan Sun Casino, Uncasville, CT

In the heart of Mohegan Sun's Casino of the Earth, new kid on the block Ballo's sprawling, exuberant scale may appear to be as over the top as any Vegas establishment, but is a perfect example of big things coming in big packages. This is a quality that restaurant maverick John J. Tunney III, owner of Ballo, emphasizes in his cuisine and brainchild. At a press lunch this afternoon, we got a chance to experience Ballo's menu and see the newly finished restaurant in the flesh.

Ballo has come a long way in two months, transforming from a nervously piecemeal jumble to a polished, stately restaurant. Long expanses of artificial greenery and red accents make a bold statement in the otherwise dark casino. Immense Gothic arches and wood-carved columns fill the 16,000 square foot expanse, serving as a persistent theme throughout the restaurant.
As we tour the restaurant, the boyish Mr. Tunney points out in a flustered, yet noticeably pleased manner, the pieces of the restaurant that were recently finished yet appear as though they took months to create. The name of the restaurant spelled out in carved metal on the floor. The slender decorative touches on the Corinthian columns. All small details that make a big splash in the atmosphere of Ballo.

The restaurant is segmented into bar areas and dinner areas, dance floors and private rooms, but not in a way that makes the eater feel separated from any one area of the restaurant. Rather, Tunney wishes to have these alcoves as ways for diners to experience the restaurant through many lenses under one roof.
High-profile customers can have their library lounges and butler doors if they so choose, complete with hired security, yet with the option to hang out at the bar or dance in the back as well. A middle coffeehouse-style area has comfortably zany zebra print chairs and candlelit tables for close contact and a comforting oasis from the bustle of the casino. No one room feels staid or added on at the last minute. Each area presents its own set of unique possibilities for customizing your dining experience.

While we did socialize at the centerpiece of the restaurant, Ballo's enormous marble bar, 12 in the afternoon seemed a little too early to dance on the tables. We started off our tasting by noshing on some frighteningly addictive figs, roasted to gooey perfection, smeared with goat cheese, and bundled in prosciutto.

We washed these down with a selection of drinks, including Ballo's signature cocktail, the Ballo Limonata, a delicately spritzed mixture of limonata, Spirit Vodka, and a frozen blood orange sphere. Refreshing and quenching with a neat twist on ice cubes and less dilution.

Later, we retreated to the rear, to a back room that makes a fine case for coming back, with integrated speakers and Renaissance curtained DJ area. A little dark in the afternoon, but not cavernous. This area was where we ate our meal, a special tasting menu presented by executive chef Matthew Adler and chef de cuisine Shaun Golan.
I started off dinner with a quartino of the house red, a tangy Cabernet Sauvignon. Ballo serves wine in 8 oz. quartinos, a pleasant and generous portion compared to the standard 5 oz. restaurant pour and priced like a typical glass. This is poured in 2 oz. portions from an individual pitcher that prevents the likely dribbling that comes with great, galumphing glasses of wine. With this, I was able to replenish as I pleased (though our server was so attentive there was no need to) and pace myself throughout the lunch. I enjoyed the cab. For a house wine, it was neither overly complex nor hiding poor quality under the house name. It is worth noting that Ballo boasts a wine list of over 60 wines, 16 of them offered by the quartino, and all of them Italian.

For a lunch sandwiched between an unexpected 300 person cocktail party on behalf of the Mohegan tribe and the frantic anxiety of an opening night less than 24 hours away, Ballo presented a thoughtful and well-executed taste of its offerings, from cocktails to coffee, in a special seven course tasting menu. We started with the dish that had captivated us the last time around, the Ballo Caprese with a creamy mound of burrata, roasted cherry tomatoes, and housemade pesto. For an antipasti, this was a huge portion. The burrata was creamy and silky, with a porous texture that sopped up the pesto around it. The pesto was finely mixed and added a needed boost of salinity to the cheese, along with the tomatoes. Like last time, these were roasted, which added an additional dimension to the dish, but were roasted much better than the last time around and had less of a bite. An exceptionally good start.
Bread was passed around along with the burrata, freshly baked Italian loaves hot from the oven. This was ripped off in healthy chunks, and served with a mixture of herbed garlic olive oil and butter. A traditional start to the meal and like the burrata, an excellent sponge for the leftover pesto. We followed this with another antipasti dish, crispy artichokes with arugula and lemon. These were lightly crispy on the outside and yielding on the inside, and small enough to pop in your mouth. If all my vegetables were prepared in this fashion, I'd likely be more inclined to go vegetarian. The artichokes were not breaded, and I suspect that as a result of this, did not sop up excess oil. Light and tender, the mild flavor of the artichokes was perked up by the addition of tart lemon juice and pickled scallions. More scallions and a hair more salt would have been preferred.
Following this was a dish of pork meatballs with broccoli rabe, ricotta salata, and marinara sauce. Our server said there was pancetta floating around in this somewhere, but any additional ingredient would have died an anonymous death, smothered in the rich marinara and savory cheese. Pancetta or not, these were delightfully nostalgic for all at the table, at least, those of us with marinara running through our veins. The meatballs erred toward the large side with an airy, moist texture and a rush of oregano and garlic. The sauce was equally bold with a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes and a smooth texture. Three of these sat in a miniature skillet. Believe me when I tell you that it took all of my restraint to not inhale each one.
The lunch took a slightly different turn after our trio of appetizers, and we were brought out a communal sweet sausage pizza to share amongst us. With a mozzarella and pecorino blend pooling in crannies left between strings of caramelized onion and chunks of pepperocini, this was a hearty yet controlled pie. With so many unctuous ingredients, one would expect something richer, sopping with oil and overspiced, but this seemed almost delicate. A meat lover's special for the lady in Louboutins. It was sweet and fragrant, with a hearty crust and a light scattering of sausage.
It is worth noting that taking on a pizza project in Connecticut is as risky as taking on lobster in Maine or maple syrup in Vermont. While nothing could replace some of my beloved New Haven eateries, this was a worthy contender and offered up some creative deviation to the by-the-book apizza standard 50 miles west.
Our next dish was a small plate of fresh ravioli, the shell of which is housemade daily on premise, filled with mascarpone, ricotta, and parmesan, and covered in more tasty pesto. A tangy and comforting dish. However, the pasta shell was a little thick for its sweet, milky contents.
From that, we moved on to another pasta dish, a lusty tagliatelle doused in bechamel with chunks of proscuitto, and broiled with an end consistency of a savory toasted marshmallow. This achieved a nice bite to a normally saucy dish and added an additionally smoky note that the prosciutto certainly couldn't have done on its own amongst all the cheese. The flavor was rich and the sauce a bit grainy, but flavorful. We found that the pasta held the sauce well and was cooked just a bit less than most mushy al dente offerings, with a firm structure.There was a brief rest in between the tagliatelle and this steak course, and a well-needed one to digest and chat amongst ourselves. When this came out, a hush descended over the self-proclaimed carnivores of the group as we tucked into a filet mignon with heirloom tomatoes, radicchio, arugula pesto, and a balsamic reduction. This was a steakhouse standard prepared with Italian accents. A great cut of steak, elevated even higher with a thick crust and a buttery, smooth cut, cooked medium rare and very moist. The steak knife was almost superfluous, and the steak was seasoned minimally, as all steaks should be. The fresh tomatoes were sweet, but somewhat excessive. The pesto was the only low point of this dish. This was now the third dish in our menu with pesto, and this manifested itself in a peppery, earthy version that dominated most of the flavors in the steak and vegetables if applied too liberally.
Our savory courses settled in our stomachs, we moved on to coffee and dessert, of which there was thankfully only one course. Illy coffee was served along with miniature cannoli with a double garnish of chopped pistachio nuts and dark chocolate chips, baked by resident chef-of-all-trades, Mr. Adler himself.
The cannoli, yet another Wooster Street facsimile treading dangerously close to its granddaddy, was a slimmer cigarillo-type pastry, lacking the bready, oily crust and choking globs of cheese that make its larger version so delectable. Still a sumptuous offering, with a spiced mascarpone filling and a crispy, wonton-like shell. A quiet, classic way to end the whole affair, as blended and solid as the artful quotes filling the walls, Thoreau interpretations by Tunney's brother.
As our lunch wound down, Tunney lingered, not wanting the party to end and the music to die down. He chatted with us, cards were exchanged, and his smile fell a bit as we left. Tunney expounds upon his ideas as we walk out. "Everyone has a story," Tunney tells us as we wait outside, not wanting to leave the splendor. "And we want to hear it." Hear them he will. The man with the golden restaurant touch opens Ballo tomorrow to the public, ready to whirl Mohegan Sun visitors around the dance floor and delight the senses. Be there, or be square. This is one dance you won't want to miss.