Forsythia, a pasta palace in the LES
A destination for the passportless
My passport expired: a problem when you’re newly wed and flirting with the idea of international travel at long last. Forsythia, a Roman-style restaurant in the LES is perhaps the next best thing, a flawless choice for commencing a post-nuptial return to latenight carb-feast. The restaurant is situated on a quiet stretch of Stanton Street behind Freeman’s Alley and next to Bungee Space, a coffee shop cum bookstore where the arty Asian crowd holed up over books and beanies couldn’t be more different than the folks at Forsythia: cheugy and earnest B-school grads, women in their late 30s, beautiful but not intimidatingly so having a sensible girl’s night out.
I reserved a sidewalk table, but arrived early hoping to eat in the impressively erected and fetchingly transportive Roman pergola. No dice. Tucked underneath a cloth napkin was a real menu printed on not-so-flimsy paper, an sign of old-school delights to come, as the pandemic has stoked in me an appreciation for tangible sundries taken for granted. The next fortuitous omen: two slivers of focaccia accompanied by olive oil and butter, whipped like vapors. After polishing it whole.
With great difficulty we limited our choices and started with the Roman-style arancine called supplí. My husband asked if it would be just one and I laughed in his face: who would in good conscious could sell a single supplí for $15? The price tag (substantial) and moniker (plural) indicated we should be fed multiple, but the capitalist mechanics of restaurant supply-chains and my poor understanding of southern Italian dialect failed me. The server brought us one potato-sized croquette, a lonely island in a thick lake, a swamp really, of cacio e pepe gravy. Supplí, apparently, is derived phonetically from the French word for surprise (sou-pree), supposedly, because of its unexpected and enigmatic contents. I was shocked two-fold when I bit into the toothsome risotto and found it worth every cent. I took each forkful through a lap around the peppery viscousness, which has the same consistency of a mac and cheese roux. I would have ordered another if we didn’t have three pastas on the way.
Casoncelli are lithe candy-wrappers stretched taut over robiola, an italian approximation of cream cheese, resting on a bed of frilled mushrooms and roasted corn. The agnolotti, a menu mainstay, were sturdier parcels concealing a rich bovine secret. Plainly bronzed and modestly oiled with duck jus, these envelopes require a firmer bite, one you’d deploy with a take-out wonton. An unctuous short rib awaits on the other end of the dough, which may have ended up thicker than the chef intended but gave the pasta a certain “poppability.”
When not charred on a binchotan, chicken livers inspire ambivalence in me, so the tajarin, thin ribbons coated in the stuff, was not my first choice, intriguing as it was. It was my husband’s though and I was afforded the chance to try it. Gone is the metallic bluntness of offal, replaced by an elegant and mesmerizing concentration that evokes the fowl as a whole. It was like swiping bread through the pan juices leftover from a roast. Sheepishly, then brazely, I asked for a few more twists of the handcut noodles.
In the Rome episode of Stanley Tucci’s CNN travel show, he sits down for a lone espresso and to his surprise (or should I say suppli) is haplessly gifted a classic, regional pastry called maritozzo, which he stares down with more horror than is deserving of a sweet brioche. He indulges his host but can’t muster more taste because he’s about to have pasta for dinner. (To be fair, the yeasted bun, flush with cream, appeared to be the size of the head of a newborn with a bonnet, but in his shoes I would not have declined.)
At Forsythia the maritozzo, my first ever, is a thing to behold, proof that the most simple things can yield so much pleasure. The small canoe of bread didn’t exhibit the soft tearability of its dinner roll kin and required a fork and knife, though if I were in the confines of my home it is possible that you’d find me barreling face-first into the nimbus of chantilly cream, positioned perfectly between heft and lightness. My husband stole three bites, which is two more than I wished to concede and three more than he ever takes when it comes to dessert. I let him have the last bite. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.