J. Walman's B'Way and Entertainment Report Card
Nino's Positano: A+

6-21-00

Nino Selimaj is expanding his restaurant-empire: Nino's, a wildly popular Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, and Osso Buco, a family-style Italian that manages to transcend the commercialism of its competitors.

Positano's service is transparently-integrated: the bread, often an afterthought in uptown Italian restaurants, is a fresh, delicious country slice; the food is inspired.

Crunchy flat bread is topped with wild mushroom onion confit, roboila cheese, and arugula ($11.00). The result is a testimony to the chef's no-nonsense approach to cooking. The base remains crisp, the vegetables sing, and the flavor is focused. It would have been so easy to ruin this dish by pre-assembling it or worse yet, grilling the whole into a soggy blur.

The same purity is evidenced in a Swiss chard and leek soup special. Even salads, so often more show than substance, are special at Nino's Positano. Roasted beets, endive, and frisse are bound together with creamy goat cheese and a light dressing that releases the components into a fusion of flavors that are conspicuously homogenous and refreshingly devoid of lemongrass, galangal, or ginger ($9.00).

A pasta special dressed with tomato-basil, laced with cubes of first rate mozzarella on perfectly timed strands of imported whole-wheat linguini is delicious. Rigatoni with canneloni beans, fresh tomato chunks, and parmesan cheese is wonderful. I must confess a certain bias when it comes to pasta; I'm a purist. I want the sauces simple and unfussy - the noodles cooked within one second of perfection.

Two entrees are noteworthy: Chicken, cooked under a brick (a real one the waiter assured me), with lemon, parsley, and exceptional fried potatoes ($19.00). A double cut, 12 ounce veal chop with what the menu described as "exotic" mushroom and rosemary jus was worth the $34.00 price tag. There is veal and there is veal. You just can't skimp on a quality-product in that area and this meat cries out "I'm the best money can buy." The grilling was superb; the jus, neither accessory nor overkill.

The wine list offers a wide range of prices and selections from Italy, America, and the world. Unless wines of the ethnicity of the cuisine I'm dining on offer poor value, I tend to gravitate in that direction. With $19.00 startups at Positano, I definitely suggest going Italian all the way. The highly respected Chiarlo's Barbara d'Asti, 1997 ($25.00) was medium bodied, acidic enough to hold up to tomatoes and sauces, and would even work with robust seafood preparations. If you're in a festive feel, you won't do better than Bouvet Brut ($21.00) and if you need to impress that business associate, look no further than the intense Bertani Amarone, 1964, a good value at $350.00, and one of the few Amarone's I've seen on a new restaurant's wine list that's ready in this lifetime.

I have a predilection for pannacotta, that airy Italian pudding, clinging to life with just enough gelatin to bind it. It was delectable. I didn't get a chance to sample Nino's signature lobster for two, served "fra diavolo-style" on linguini ($69.00). But the memory of the dish, sampled last year uptown, like the melody in the song - lingers on. Come to think of it, so does that Swiss chard and leek soup. Nino's Positano, 890 Second Ave, between 47th and 48th Streets, (212) 355-5540, stands out from the overcrowded Italian restaurant scene and rates A-plus on my restaurant report card.
-J. Walman