The beef tendon at I Cavallini is the gentlest of introductions to this hardworking part of animal musculature, justly celebrated in other parts of the world but perhaps less expected at an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn with a line of reverent diners-in-waiting on the sidewalk every night.
Nothing on the plate will remind you that this sinew once held a knee and ankle together. No rubber-band snap, nor the slippery ooziness that comes after long boiling, when the tendon starts to surrender its youth-restoring collagen. Nick Curtola, the chef, braises the cut for hours until it bends to his will, then presses it into a terrine and runs it through a meat slicer. The result is as plush as raw scallop, dense then melting.
In Northern Italy, this is called nervetti. Mr. Curtola had it in Venice, with onions and a bottle of vinegar plonked alongside. His presentation at I Cavallini is more delicate. The onions are briefly immersed in the liquid from chive blossoms he pickled last spring, lending a pang of grassy sweetness. And those tiny blobs? That’s the gelatin that rises to the surface of the terrine, strained and clarified, ready to dissolve into a burst of bouillon.
Elegant rusticity and unshowy intelligence have been hallmarks of Mr. Curtola’s cooking for the past decade at the Four Horsemen, I Cavallini’s acclaimed forerunner across the street. (“Cavallini” in Italian means “little horses.”) He now heads both kitchens, spending most of his time at the new spot and hopping back over during lulls.
But when are there lulls? Even after all these years, nabbing a seat at the Four Horsemen is a near-miracle — a friend of mine tried to get in one weekend and was told, “There are 60 people ahead of you” — and since opening in mid-July, its offshoot has drawn the same adoring crowds.
It takes a while for a restaurant to settle in and find itself, whatever its pedigree. I didn’t visit I Cavallini until two months in, and still wondered if that was too soon. Service was slightly stiff. The space suggested a stage set: white brick, checkerboard tile, lamps that don’t so much shed light as hoard it, prints of a 14th-century religious panel by Simone Martini in one corner and a blue horse by David Shrigley in another. It didn’t feel quite lived in yet.
Some of the dishes I ate seemed like works in progress, too. Where the Four Horsemen’s menu wanders, beholden only to Mr. Curtola’s curiosity, here the kitchen is pledged to Italy, a brief that may be at times constricting for a chef whose instinct is to resist the familiar. (Note that the menu changes with the seasons and ingredients and dishes may differ from what is described here.)
I’m always gratified to encounter sarde in saor, a Venetian snack of fried sardines that have wallowed in vinegar with onions, raisins and pine nuts: agrodolce, that happy union of opposites. At I Cavallini the dish is reimagined with eel, blanched and scored to break up the bones, given an airy, tempura-esque coat and pinned with a toothpick to crunchy baguette. A smart idea, but mine came with the eel in slabs the length of the toast, so each bite registered as mostly batter and bread.
Colatura de alici — the amber drippings of anchovies buried in salt, a legacy of medieval monks along the Amalfi Coast — is promised on the menu but largely undetectable in a side of juicy Persian cucumbers. They’re fun to eat nevertheless, punched up with a green goddess-like dressing, more California than Campania.
The menu lists pastas as primi and meats as secondi, in the Italian way. The former are generous enough to stand alone, above all the farfallone, big floppy bow ties glossed with Calabrian chile butter that’s rousingly hot and smoky-sweet, with chewy thick strips of smoked pancetta to match.
Among the secondi are a respectable roast chicken, pasture-raised, brined and air-dried for a few days to prime the skin for crisping, and rich lamb sausage with a touch of pork and the faintest licorice tinge of fennel pollen. But on a recent evening, my first bite of seared bluefin tuna belly was pure fat, and when I reached in for another try, the flesh squished under my knife, as if deflating.
If there are stumbles, the kitchen earns a certain grace with its determination to push beyond the obvious. You can see the delight Mr. Curtola takes in the rare ingredient and the difficult technique. A brothy version of pasta e fagioli pairs gnocchetti sardi, little hollow shells from Sardinia, and creamy zolfini beans with barely-there skins, a fragile crop traditionally grown on terraced Tuscan hills and nearly lost to extinction.
Twisty trofie pasta is a wink at fellow cooks who know the labor behind the shape, rolling the tight corkscrews with the edge of the palm. The spirals catch every drop of verdant pesto, under shavings of Belper Knolle, a hard cheese from Switzerland spiked with garlic and dredged in black pepper.
Nothing is done just to check a box, not even the most straightforward indulgences. There’s no better beginning to a meal here than a great knobby cake of focaccia with whipped ricotta on the side, cherry tomatoes pooling at the center, roasted until they cave in and all their sugars run dark. And no better end than tiramisù, assembled freestyle, to order, with cream in dollops upon dollops, like a mob of clouds.
At I Cavallini, Italy is best understood as not so much a destination as a point of departure. My favorite dish, a crudo of Spanish mackerel, was Italian in only the most expansive sense, affirming the pursuit of a beautiful life: pausing the endless cycle of judgments, the rush from best to best, and letting your attention rest on the smallest details, even if they add up to nothing more than a moment’s pleasure — like the splash of tart verjus over the fish, and a fist’s worth of tiny red-black grapes, popping bright as cherries.
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