When the Brooklyn restaurateur Andrew Tarlow was scouting sites for his new restaurant, he wasn’t focused on location. What he was looking for was good ghosts.
The space he eventually chose for Borgo, on East 27th Street in Manhattan, had excellent ones. It wasn’t just that the building had what real-estate agents call good bones — rooms that were big but not cavernous, a large garden out back, a working fireplace and a wood-burning oven. It was the palpable feeling that those rooms, which once housed the long-lived Pugliese restaurant I Trulli, had been well used and well loved during the previous quarter-century. And Mr. Tarlow said he wanted to steward it through the next one.
That’s exactly what he’d done in 1999 with his first restaurant, Diner, refurbishing an old Pullman dining car beneath the Williamsburg Bridge. When it first opened, eating at Diner was like a raucous dinner party in an artist friend’s loft. Packed wall-to-wall with hipsters, the scene was buzzy, the music loud and the farm-to-table menu concise enough to be scribbled, ad hoc, onto the butcher-paper-covered tables.
The spirit of Mr. Tarlow’s dinner party still hovers at Borgo, more than two decades and several restaurants on. (Mr. Tarlow also owns Achilles Heel, Marlow & Sons and Roman’s with his wife, Kate Huling.) It’s just that the vibe has mellowed, the boisterous thrum settling into a convivial hum.
Borgo is Mr. Tarlow’s largest, most ambitious restaurant yet, his first in Manhattan and his least “of the moment.” If Diner reflected the specific time and place (raw Y2K Williamsburg) that birthed it, Borgo’s candlelit ambience, inviting Italian menu and genuinely warm service feel open and timeless, more part of a continuum than of a fixed moment. The restaurant could be old or new, and located almost anywhere. And it exudes a practiced confidence and grace that are in-the-know without being exclusive.
Come early, even if you haven’t reserved, to grab a spot at the marble-topped bar near the front window, which glows pink in the winter dusk. Then feast on any of the excellent housemade pastas, or a plate of hearty lentils and pork sausage (also made in-house), maybe paired with a well-priced bottle from the wine director Lee Campbell’s thoughtful, natural-leaning list.
If you’ve managed to score a reservation, you’ll be guided into one of two elegant, wainscoted dining rooms to find a table with your first name handwritten on butcher paper covering the tablecloth (that Diner spirit again). One icy December evening, my friends and I sat close enough to the fireplace to hear the flames crackle, but far enough from other diners to feel we were in our own world. The generous space between tables is a welcome departure from Mr. Tarlow’s restaurants past.
A sense of generosity also informs the crowd-pleasing, oft-changing menu, a collaboration between Mr. Tarlow and the chef Jordan Frosolone (formerly of Hearth and the Momofuku restaurant group). It skews seasonal Italian, but never sticks to the expected.
Take the gorgeously singed “focaccia Borgo.” Based on a Genoese recipe, this isn’t the fluffy cushion we know so well, but a cracker-thin disk, round and wide as a hubcap, and speckled with crispy bits of Parmesan. Pull it apart and soft fontina, stracchino and Robiolina ooze seductively from its center. Borgo has managed to take something as universally appealing as focaccia and make it even more lovable.
Same with the bagna cauda. Instead of a wreath of vegetables surrounding a ramekin of dipping sauce, Borgo offers a plate of radishes and hakurei turnips, their guts scooped out and filled with the warm anchovy mixture. Not only does this give you more anchovy goodness per bite, but the little vegetable vessels prevent the oil from dripping down your blouse. It’s a brilliant innovation that turns the traditional recipe on its head, without losing a drop.
Anchovies make another appearance in a pungent tangle of puntarelle piled next to rosy slices of the wood-oven-roasted lamb. There are soft pieces of prune on the plate, too, their winy sweetness a beautiful contrast to the gaminess of the meat. The dish manages to feel novel and classic at the same time.
This sweet-funky harmony runs like a refrain through Mr. Frosolone’s dishes, and it sings each time. There’s syrupy Marsala on the juicy, golden-skinned roast chicken; jammy figs garnishing the silky swipe of chicken liver pâté on the cr
Other Borgo triumphs rely less on invention than virtuosity. The delicata squash, its rings battered and fried like doughnuts, served with chile, honey and a flurry of salty Pecorino Ginepro, is irresistible. So is the classic fava-bean purée, a humble Pugliese specialty and a homage to a dish that I Trulli once served in these very rooms. Smooth as butter and nearly as rich, it gains a complex smoky depth from the wood oven Borgo inherited from its departed predecessor. Those good ghosts work overtime.
Inevitably, with a menu that changes this much, there are misfires — some over-saffroned gnocchi, an underseasoned tilefish, gritty whole-wheat chitarra. Happily, these glitches are rare.
Triumphs being the rule here rather than the exception, they continue on the pastry chef Adam Marca’s dessert menu. The sublimely fudgy Sacher torte and a feather-light cheese strudel in a puddle of satiny custard are more nods to the past, this time to Mr. Tarlow’s own Viennese ancestors. Good ghosts indeed.
ostini; coffee liqueur glazing pillowy sweetbreads blackened at the edges by the wood fire. It’s no longer on the menu, but one of my favorite appetizers was the beef-heart spiedini, the tender, steak-like chunks shiny with Thomcord-grape purée.
All these organ meats prove that Borgo has a wild side, though a very charming wild side. Even the offal-hesitant diner at my table couldn’t stop herself from nibbling a corner of a plush and sticky sweetbread — then proceeding to gobble the rest.
Another edgy dish, which reads as unremarkable on the menu, is the branzino. The boneless whole fish is roasted in the wood flames until the skin sizzles and crisps, then arrives at the table with its face intact — a treat for those who prize the tender cheeks. Feel free to request it headless, but either way, accompanied by a heap of nearly melted, saffron-scented onions and pine nuts, it is an unqualified triumph.
