Is the Rezdora Sequel Worth the Two-Hour Wait?
The early word on Massara, including how to snag a table! Plus: Charlotte Druckman on desserts at Penny and Txikito
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One thing to eat today | Massara’s cold spaghettoni
After spending a few hours at The Met last Friday — the air conditioning was compelling at the Temple of Dendur — I started cycling over to a buzzy downtown restaurant. And then I changed my mind for these two reasons:
It is officially cold noodle season
The restaurant I was traveling to did not serve cold noodles
So I recalibrated. I docked my Citibike. And I strode into Massara, a posh new wood-fired spot in Flatiron by the team behind Rezdora.
This is where chef Stefano Secchi plays Outkast (“Ms. Jackson”) and sends out tangles of cold spaghettoni draped in luxe shellfish. The noodles glow neon red and taste of a coastal breeze. Cost: $28.
Fancy Italian chefs aren’t particularly famous for chilled noodles — to their detriment. I’ll take a bowl of spicy, stretchy liang pi over a steaming plate of bolognese whenever the temperature exceeds “Eastern European bathhouse.”
Secchi knows there’s a market inefficiency here.
Just one problem: The chef has developed a bit of a following over the years. The Emilia Romagna-leaning Rezdora — with its $98 pasta tasting that’s paced like an elegant omakase — remains one of the city’s toughest tables.
Massara has not escaped this popularity vortex. An initial text from the restaurant, whose geographic area of interest leans towards Campania, suggested a 15-minute wait. Though a bar seat didn’t actually materialize until about two hours later.
So…after about 160 minutes total, a waiter brings over my cold noodles!
Not quite instant relief from the heat.
The fat spaghettoni arrive in a small, vertical twirl — imagine a little tornado made of pasta. Rich prawn stock clings to each noodle, while creamy gobs of sea urchin hide within. And on top lie a few slices of gambero rosso — one of the greatest shrimp a human can eat.
That raw gambero wobbles and pops on the tongue as if it were an unpeeled grape. The urchin and prawn stock, laced with a little bit of almond, deliver a sweet hit of the sea, like ocean froth spiked with sugar. And then the firm noodles do what they do best: they cool your insides.
Does a meal here merit the wait? Scroll to the bottom for more thoughts on that front. But this is instantly one of the city’s great pasta dishes.
Testing Out a New Vibe for The Lo Times
This is a new column format that I’m toying around with! Some possible titles include The Lo, Morning Lunch, The Supplement, The Supp, or The Pregame. Though honestly, I’m leaning towards not calling it anything because not everything on god’s green earth needs bespoke branding lol.
Here, we’ll include original reporting, short interviews with cool people, intel on openings and resies, clutch takes on hot new dishes — and maybe even brief reviews. Eventually, I’d love this to be a second weekly column — something to run in the days after a longer “best of” list or a full restaurant review — but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. This is in beta, as the kids like to say!
Obsession Session | Penny, Txikito
Welcome to Obsession Session, a new mini-feature about what folks are excited about in our culinary world. For the our first edition, we have one of my favorite people in the known universe: Charlotte Druckman!
Many of you already know Druckman from her bylines in the Wall Street Journal, Eater, and elsewhere, as well as from The Sweethearts, an excellent new Substack about pastries, confections, and breadstuffs.
When I asked Druckman what she’s loving these days, she told me she was excited about some very tasty desserts at the shellfish emporium that is Penny, and at the Basque destination that is Txikito. Here’s our convo, which occurred over text:
Druckman: Well, you know I want to live at Penny. But so does everyone else we know. [And], one thing about Penny, I think the chocolate mousse is the sleeper hit there.
Sutton: That’s fascinating, because so many people, myself included, are more obsessed over the sesame brioche ice cream sandwich that’s actually a sandwich
Druckman: Um, I don’t love the ice cream sandwich as much as everyone else. I like it! But I want it to be an open-face situation, like a tartine, and I want the bread to be TOASTED. I’m sure people are going to disagree with this strongly…
Sutton: I disagree, lol, but wait, can I ask what makes you fond of the chocolate mousse at Penny? Is it “la technique,” the flavor, the visuals…?
Druckman: The texture of that mousse! I’m not even sure it’s a mousse, proper. It’s something closer to a ganache or a cremeux. It’s just so ridiculously smooth and, I usually hate this word when food writers use it, but it makes sense to me here —unctuous. It isn’t grainy or craggy. It has less “texture” in that sense of a classic French chocolate mousse, which I do love….It’s like you got to eat all the ganache off a really great chocolate cake. That, for me, is a dream come true
Sutton: I love that word, unctuous. It was banned at one point, I recall, for me and my peers, but I think it works wonderfully at times, especially in a positive sense, versus in a “used carman” sense.
Druckman: And...I am a sucker for hazelnuts. Anything with hazelnuts. This mousse has candied hazelnuts on top, and then they finish it with some VANILLA OIL, and a little hit of salt. That oil adds to that unctuous effect.
Sutton: It’s like “Dear waiter: Can you make this ganache more unctuous for me?” And Penny is like “we got you!!!"
Druckman: It’s super intense, but that’s how I like my chocolate experiences…That said, my perfect meal at Penny would maybe end in my going downstairs and having that insanely large multi-layered chocolate cake. I love that cake so much. It’s one of the best restaurant desserts in NYC IMO. I have taken the leftovers to-go. People are always taking home leftovers of savory dishes, as they should. BUT YOU CAN TAKE LEFTOVER DESSERT HOME.
Sutton: For those who remember, the restaurant downstairs is called Claud, lol, and it’s damn good, but for so many of us now it is indeed the….restaurant downstairs!
One more thing: Druckman added that she’s a big fan of the “Ruso” at Txikito by Alex Raij and Eder Montero. Her words: “It’s three components: this cultured cream (texturally, it’s a cross between clotted cream and brie) that has a savory edge, kind of like cream cheese and not sweet at all, plus crunchy sweet meringue, then coconut. BOOM.”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity
Openings of Note | Carnitas Ramirez
A modern rite of culinary passage is standing in line at Taqueria Ramirez in Greenpoint for blowtorched tripe tacos.
Well, now New Yorkers can line up in Manhattan as well. And that’s what they did during the opening weekend of Giovanni Cervantes and Tania Apolina’s sophomore spot: Carnitas Ramirez.
The venue specializes nose-to-tail tacos — assorted pork parts simmered in lard — in the style that one might find in Michoacán. I hear there were all sorts of porcine treats during the opening days, including snout, oreja, lengua, skin, ribs, and cabeza. Tacos are $5 each, or $1 extra with chicharrón. I’ll have more to say soon, but for now here’s Eater’s Luke Fortney with the opening report. Weekends-only, for now. 210 East 3rd Street, East Village
The Price Hike | Atomix
Ellia Park and chef Junghyun Park’s Atomix is one of the city’s most exclusive restaurants. There are just 16-seats at the chef’s counter. And every month, reservations get snapped up within an hour of their release.
Well, now there’s a slightly higher bar to clear for entry.
Shortly before the restaurant jumped up to No. 6 on the 50 Best List, Atomix announced that the price of dinner would rise from $395 to $420, service-included. I raved about the destination in a 2018 review for Eater, when it was $210 after tip. It is now more than double that cost, a changeover I classified as part of the “Pivot to Rich” movement. As an alternative, allow me to recommend the team’s more affordable set-menu Atoboy, priced at $75, service-included.
Behind the paywall: How to get into Massara, and what to order!
Timing is everything…