GREEN VODKA SAUCE AND LASAGNA CHIPS AT A NEW BROOKLYN RESTAURANT
For anyone who wants to open a Brooklyn Italian restaurant that feels like it has something new to say, they’ll probably want to do away with conventions: gingham red-and-white tablecloths and chicken Parm, as lovable as they are, need not apply. Daphne’s, opening on Saturday, April 20, bears little resemblance to the red sauce joints that co-owners Gary Fishkop and Paul Cacici, grew up with in Sheepshead Bay, and the North End of Boston, respectively.
The 50-seat restaurant located at 299 Halsey Street, at Throop Avenue in Bed-Stuy, sticks to hues of greens and purples, with walls covered with old New York Philharmonic ephemera, and a ball-chain curtain, made to reference the facade of the ballet theater at Lincoln Center. During the construction process, overhauling what was a former bodega, they discovered a window of glass bricks, which they’ve replicated in the bar. There are white tablecloths, but in a New York bistro way, not in a fussy fine dining way. The design was executed by Will Rose, an artist, and Jeremy Anderegg, a service industry veteran and creative.
And while there’s no Sunday gravy on the menu, Fishkop — who grew up going to spots like Ortobello on Bay Parkway — hopes that Daphne’s will be, as it ages, evocative of old-school Brooklyn neighborhood hangouts, remixed for today’s diners.
At restaurants Cacici’s been part of — like Decades Pizza and formerly Carmenta’s — there hasn’t quite been the right time or audience for some of the dishes he had wanted to do. “I’ve been trying to mess around with a red, white, green dish for a while now,” says Cacici. The cooking is more dressed up than at his Ridgewood pizzeria. He points to a tri-colored scallop offering on Daphne’s menu, which uses salsa verde, Calabrian chile, Parmesan, and bread crumbs, to create the visual effect of an Italian flag. “There’s always the concern of something looking good, but you want to make sure the flavor hits.”
At Daphne’s, Cacici brought on Jamie Tao (formerly of Wildair, Contra, and Roberta’s) as chef de cuisine. “I’m really into the green vodka sauce Jamie has created,” says Cacici. Rather than the sauce cloaking rigatoni, it's served atop fiddlehead ferns. “Tomatoes aren’t in season right now, so we thought why not use something like a green tomato?” says Tao. “It’s sort of an esoteric view of something so familiar.”
There are other Brooklyn twists: The beef tartare is served with dried, broken pasta sheets as crunchy crackers — lasagna chips as they’re listed on the menu. Cacici says: “We’re doing a lot of things here that traditionalists might cringe at.” The mafaldine, for example, has been cut into shorter pieces “for better bite” than long strands, with razor clams and Chinese budding chives. On the list of entrees, find a swordfish Milanese with spring peas. For dessert, there will be tiramisu and eclair. There’s wine by the glass and bottle, and a cocktail menu that features drinks like one with basil, bourbon, grapefruit, lime, and orange liqueur.
The Daphne’s menu isn’t striving for revelatory, says Cacici, just the “kind of food we actually enjoy eating.”