Cuisine:

• Others
• Italian
• Fast Food and Hamburgers

Fratellilyon Description:
Incorporated into the front of the Italian design studio Driade (the company's first American venture) is this casual-chic café. What better hangout for this artsy neighborhood than a restaurant where patrons can eat, then buy the designer place settings? As for the eats, the word "café" may bring to mind sandwiches, but Fratelli is actually more like Italy's enotecas---wine bars with a large variety of small plates. And here, the plates, and quaffs, have a welcome Slow Food-influenced "green" orientation, with an emphasis on sourced, sustainable, small-production foodstuffs and wines. Over half of the menu is devoted to artisan cheeses and salumi, plus unfussy, ingredient-driven prepared seafood or vegetable antipasti and salads. It's tempting to make a meal of these small plates, some of which, like an elegant vitello tonnato (veal with velvety tuna-caper sauce) accompanied by a nicely dressed frisée-arugula-radicchio salad, are almost entrée-size. But there are also full-portioned meat, fish and pasta entrées, including simple but quite good ravioli Evelina (with fresh ricotta, asparagus and brown butter). There are a few misses, like Venice's classic sweet-sour fish dish sogliole in saor, here quite bland. But most items, like fegato di vitello (delicate Venetian calf's liver with sautéed onions), are instant voyages on a plate.


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