There are about twenty seats indoors, all of them counter stools, and one or two are nearly always empty. The lights are just dim enough to soothe, the tidy menu of cocktails and bitter Italian sodas ready to offer a bit of relief. The air smells like Parmigiano and butter, the sound system is playing the Pointer Sisters.
What fascinates me is (1) the artful economy of the magazine column, and (2) the ravishing extra details of the web version. Here’s another example: in the magazine, she writes,
Have a slice of crispy farinata, a lacy-edged chickpea-flour pancake aromatic with rosemary. Have an artichoke sandwich, one of the city’s great secret sandwiches – an enormous mess of grilled artichoke hearts and hot chili peppers, barely held together by oozing provolone cheese. Bring home a pound of pasta – frilly lumache, or long, flat tubes of paccheri – and a jar of thirty-clove sauce. You won’t make pasta nearly as good as Robbins’s – even with the same ingredients, some things just have to get all the way into your bones—but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Here's the web version:
Have an espresso, fruity and bitter. Have a slice of crispy farinata, a lacy-edge chickpea-flour pancake aromatic with rosemary. Have one of the city’s great secret sandwiches, an enormous mess of marinated and grilled artichoke hearts, spiked with hot chilis and barely held together by oozing provolone cheese. Buy a pint of Robbins’s satiny hazelnut gelato. Get a pound of pasta—frilly lumache, or long tubes of paccheri—and a jar of thirty-clove sauce, heady with garlic. You won’t make pasta nearly as good as Robbins’s at home—even with the same ingredients, even with the same tools, some things just have to get all the way into your bones—but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Who would not want such delectable writing to go on forever? The print version is wonderful. But the expanded newyorker.com version is divine. To have them both is double bliss!
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