Meatball Parmigiana Sandwich

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
May 17, 2007

FRANKIES SPUNTINO
17 Clinton St
(Houston & Stanton Sts)
New York, NY 10002
212-253-2303

It’s been a while since I deliberately went out for an evening of restaurant crawling, but what else can you do when you really crave one thing but also want to try something else?! I don’t believe in choosing, and tend to end up eating two or three meals. It’s particularly fun when you can do this with girlfriends of the same mind set, so Jennie, Monica and I embarked on an evening of four rounds on Clinton Street. The intent was to try Frankies Spuntino, but the small twenty-plus seat restaurant doesn’t take reservations. While waiting, we’d start the evening with a light meal at Falai, one of our favorites, and then move on to Frankies when it was ready for us. We were having so much fun at Falai that we ate and drank more than planned, and since a forty-minute wait at Frankies turned into a two-hour wait, we stopped in at Cube 63 — across the street from Falai — with a bottle of sake and had some seared white tuna and volcano rolls in the interim. We finally started our main meal at Frankies at 10pm before returning to Falai at 11pm for dessert.

Normally, this would be the part where I start ranting about a two-hour wait for a simple eatery with a lot of attitude. Maybe it was the amount of alcohol I had consumed by that point, but I wasn’t really mad. And I enjoyed the food so much I didn’t mind, but of course, this was an unusual evening, and I wouldn’t have been so forgiving had I not already had two meals.

This was my first visit to Frankies, and I’ve never been to the original in Carroll Gardens. Frankies serves rustically straightforward Italian-American fare at extremely reasonable prices. Everything we had, from the fennel, celery root and parsley salad with red onions and lemon, the cremini mushroom and truffle oil crostini to the meatball parmigiana sandwich reflected the simplicity yet downright goodness in Frankies’ home-style cooking. There are no tricks up its sleeves but the flavors speak for themselves. I was particularly enamored with the side order of cauliflower. Roasted in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, the natural process caramelizes the vegetable slightly so there is a tinge of sweetness, but it’s entirely refreshing and addictive in a way the artificial addition of sugar could never produce. The meatball parm sandwich, as all the sandwiches on the menu, is served on the delicious rosemary bread from Sullivan Bakery.

(The article continues below in Falai’s Panna Cotta post.)

Also in American, Italian, LES, Meat, Sandwich