A Tuscan Revival, a French Debut

On Prince Street, an Homage to Tuscany

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I Daniel Krieger for The New York Times

Coco Pazzo is back. Those of you who did not eat out in Manhattan in the 1990s have no idea what I’m talking about. Those who did may now be having flashbacks to a rustic-chic Tuscan-esque restaurant, Coco Pazzo, which got a three-star Times review from Marian Burros in 1991, and to its three New York siblings, all long gone. A restaurateur’s name may be emerging from the mists of time — the name is Pino Luongo — and linked to it, the names of other vanished restaurants, Le Madri, Mad. 61, Amarcord and Tuscan Square. For readers of tabloid gossip columns, images of pasta- twirling models and executives in Armani suits may be coming into focus, along with bold-face- laden squibs about the social scenes at Mr. Luongo’s establishments in Wainscott, N.Y., and on St. Barts.

If you have trouble believing that spaghetti and fettuccine once attracted what The Times critic Bryan Miller, reviewing Le Madri in 1989, called “the hugs-and-kisses-I-love-your-hat-Ciao- baby crowd,” it may be useful to remember that this was an era when pasta was commonly thought to be a health food.

Nobody has seen the Ciao-baby crowd in a while. (We’ll have to send out a search party if it’s not back in 10 more years.) So far that is not who goes to Coco Pazzo Trattoria, which is shaping up to be a reliable and fairly priced neighborhood canteen on the SoHo corner that used to house a deliberately unstylish bar called Milady’s.

Pappa al pomodoro, a Tuscan standby, at Coco Pazzo Trattoria. Daniel Krieger for The New York Times On balance, Mr. Luongo’s version of Tuscan food retrofitted for American appetites may be easier to see for what it is now that it has lost its fashionable gloss. (He is the executive chef; Pedro Cruz is his chef de cuisine.) When you order pappa al pomodoro and taste the juicy olive oil that slicks the warm, basil-flecked, bread-thickened tomato pulp, you’re not earning bragging rights. You’re eating soup, and a very good one. Nobody will think you’re a culinary trailblazer if you get the cacciucco, either, but you can console yourself with the tender shrimp, scallops, cod and clams in the faintly spicy and fennel-scented broth.

There are two ways to approach dinner at Coco Pazzo Trattoria. (By day the place is a casual outfit called Coco Pazzo Kitchen.) One is to order what Mr. Luongo calls a piatto unico, a helping of pasta next to a related something-extra on one rectangular plate. Baked littlenecks wobble next to a twirl of linguine and, nice surprise here, ribbons of zucchini soaking in a fine white clam sauce that is made with just the firm, sweet bits. Soft chicken-and-ricotta polpettine sit next to rigatoni in sugo, not on top, so you can have pasta first and meatballs second and tell yourself you’re eating like a real Italian.

Alternatively, you might go with the main courses marked “Per La Tavola.” For once these plates really are meant for sharing: a substantial stack of spiced and roasted baby-back ribs under a warm slaw of cucumbers and tomatoes, or a spread of grilled rib-eye slices served with a separate plate of “Tuscan fries,” distinguishable from the regular kind by their fried rosemary needles.

Those fries may be awesomely browned one week but ghostly and uncrisp the next. The tagliolini cooked in the cacciucco broth as a second course after all the seafood has been eaten might be 60 seconds away from being al dente. I am not enthusiastic about the slightly tough squid in moist bread crumbs, baked rather than fried, although the dish has a following at Mr. Luongo’s other restaurant, Morso, next to the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. The soufflés that the servers try to sell halfway through the meal can be a little soupy.

But the blueberry crostata is a genuine pleasure, its crust likably sweet and tender. And you’ll appreciate the clean, bright flavors of a shot of Aperol dumped over grapefruit granita if, like me, you veer off-script and follow your piatto unico with a couple of main courses.

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