NEW YORK CORNER

by John Mariani

ROBERTO'S

603 Crescent Avenue

718-733-9503

I'm not sure how to write about Roberto Paciullo's menu, because it changes every day.  There is a printed menu, and there's a blackboard menu, but I've never paid much attention to either. (Now that I think of it, I've never actually seen the printed menu.)  I always just ask Roberto to cook for me, and most of the regulars do too.

I'm sure the items on the regular menu are all right, but Roberto (left) is one of those chefs who cooks out of the market, which happens to be all around him in the Belmont section of the Bronx, whose main street in this thoroughly Italian-American neighborhood is Arthur Avenue, where Dion and the Belmonts first doo-wopped on the corner of 187th Street and Chazz Palmieri wrote “A Bronx Tale” and where Mayor Bloomberg’s chief of staff still runs the neighborhood’s best bakery, Madonia’s.

Most of the restaurants there are pretty run-of-the-mill, with the exception of Roberto's and Mario's (to be reviewed here soon).  For several years Roberto's was located on a triangular corner, a small trattoria with rough-hewn tables in a cramped room with an even more cramped kitchen.  Somehow Roberto turned out terrific, very personalized food, but now, having moved around the corner to larger quarters, he has been able to replicate the look of the old place while giving himself and his kitchen staff room to maneuver.  New, however, is a splendid downstairs wine room (above), where you may have a private party.

“Whaddayou like? You like baby lamb?" he'll ask, if he's got great baby lamb. If he doesn't, no baby lamb. "You want I make you some ditalini with funghi porcini? But I got some fantastic rabbit tonight, you gonna go crazy you taste this rabbit.  You wanna fish?—I got branzino so fresh it gonna bite you back. I do it simple, a little arugula, olive oil, that’s it. With this you gotta try this new wine I just get in from Sardegna. You drink this you make love all night.” Roberto does this with anybody who shows real interest in his food, the kind of people who aren’t looking for chicken parm and ziti with red sauce, the kind of people who start off with some crostini with smoked scamorza mozzarella, then a big plate of bucatini with lamb ragù, then a seafood stew full of calamari and vongole, then end off with a perfect Neapolitan cheesecake called pastiera. You leave almost bewildered that food can taste so good.

Think of Rao’s with great food and without the Wiseguys. (It gets a very high complement of celebs, pols, and just about every NY Yankee. Think of a dockside trattoria in Salerno--where Roberto comes from and learned to cook from his mother--and how the clams and the shrimp taste like the sea. The prices here are very, very reasonable, the portions generous, and the wine list the best in the neighborhood.

I could do without the extremely loud "Happy Birthday" song played whenever somehow ha one, but I don't think I could ever do without Roberto's.