Top 10 Greenmarket Restaurants, #5
The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue—Sfoglia, which in Italian refers to an uncut sheet of pasta. Everything else does, however, at this sweet, ambitious little ristorante just catty-corner to the 92nd Street Y. Unusually, owners Ron Suhanosky and Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky have managed a reverse commute. Originally founded on Nantucket, the seasonally minded red saucer opened its city branch in 2006. Worn rugs, dowdy pink chandeliers, and 10 or so mismatched butcher block tables are perhaps intended to be reminiscent of the quiet old money of its island home, but you won’t find anyone here in faded Nantucket Reds. Willful blondes and their sharp-suited catches dine on fare that is equally urban and self-assured. Antipasti takes the road less traveled, toward wild clams tossed with salami and fennel seed and hardboiled eggs in tonnato sauce, plated with fried capers. Sturdy secondi like brasciole with spinach and roasted peppers or lemon marmelata-glazed orata, a seabream fish once sacred to the goddess Aphrodite, impress. Yet it’s the primi pasta course that steals the show with its surprising combinations of market-fresh ingredients. Winter weather baked crespelle is stuffed with ricotta, prunes and walnuts, and it wouldn’t be summertime without spaghetti that subs chunks of tomato for halved strawberries and basil for balsamic.
1402 Lexington Ave., at 92nd St.; 212-831-1402; sfogliarestaurant.com
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