Torrisi Italian Specialties reopens

In preparation for [the reopening of their restaurant], Carbone delved into what he calls “how it used to be” books, such as William Grimes’s Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York and Judith Choate and James Canora’s Dining at Delmonico’s: The Story of America’s Oldest Restaurant. Torrisi, to up his kitchen game, staged for short stints with two of the most inventive chefs in the world: René Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen and Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck in Berkshire, England. And there were many visits by both men to the Astor Reading Room, though the dishes these visits yielded are like nothing that the room’s namesake, society grande dame Brooke Astor, would have experienced at her clubby Upper East Side haunts.

Among the opening bites is a cigar-shaped gnocco fritto—an Italian fried-dough pocket—wrapped in smoked black cod and then dipped in the cod’s bright-orange roe (to simulate a cigar’s glow) and poppy seeds (to simulate ashes). “The flavor profile is very much like a New York bagel, the chew of the dough with smoked fish: Italy meets Jewish deli,” Carbone says. And the gnocco is plated on a vintage Stork Club ashtray—“so when you’re done,” he says, “you’re left with a dirty ashtray on the table.”

Another bite is an oyster pierced by a Tiffany fork, but it’s a chicken oyster: that nugget of dark meat that comes off either side of the bird’s lower backbone. Torrisi says, “We poach it in beurre blanc and dip it in a Chinese oyster sauce we make, then roll it in crushed cashews—” Carbone cuts in: “—so it’s like street-cart cashews, but it’s also like chicken with cashews in a Chinese restaurant.”