Review: Nonna

Olive oil poached shrimp is served over a sprawl of chilled garbanzo beans with thin slices of celery and yellow blossoms over the top for color. Shrimp is slowly poached in a pan of olive oil heated just past the point of touch-tolerance for 6 to 12 minutes. This not only forges a velvety texture, it focuses and heightens the racy marine richness, no doubt elevated by a slow absorption of olive oil fats.

Baby artichokes, coated in semolina and fried into brittle gold, look like little Roman torches flickering in amber. A little greasy perhaps, but they still work as a counterpoint to the locally procured watercress mesh posted nearby.

The dining room is as subtle as the food. Portals squared off in the used brick wall that divides dining room from bar contain long, elaborate candlestick holders. The bar is washed in diluted greens. The dining room has hefty wooden tables and a striped banquette that runs the length of the room anchored by that wood-fired oven, sheathed in tiny ceramic tiles, bordered by a marble counter strip, seemingly smokeless.

Finish with a rhubarb cobbler, a craggy top holding a scoop of lemon gelato. Crisp cake. Smooth drippings. Brash tart. Not too much sweet. Sound, lucid tones, unadorned. Near perfect. Like so much in the Nonna canon.