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Testaccio Ristorante
- Testaccio
- Italian
- $$
- 47-30 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City
- 718-937-2900
47-30 Vernon Boulevard (near Jackson Avenue), Long Island City, Queens; (718) 937-2900, testacciony.com.
Midpriced Italian restaurants can be as predictable as cupcake places: the same five flavors show up all over town. When one breaks the mold, like Testaccio, which opened in December with a Roman menu, we go.
The chef, Ivan Beacco, last at Pepolino in TriBeCa, backs up the Roman claim with braised oxtail ($19), flower-like fried artichokes ($14) and soft gnocchi with roasted exteriors, just glazed with tomato and gilded with cheese ($14). The word “contemporary” is attached to the name (Testaccio: Contemporary Roman Cuisine when did restaurants start having subtitles?), empowering the chef to put untraditional eggplant next to the saltimbocca ($22), and turn that oxtail into a cold terrine and a pasta sauce as well as a classic braise, generally with success.
Some dishes get everything right the smokiness of guanciale in bucatini all’amatriciana ($14), a dressing’s vinegary contrast to creamy-firm white beans and chunks of roast pork ($11), an overlay of bottarga on spaghetti with garlic and clams ($19). (And the spaghetti is house-made, like most of the pastas.)
A recent special of sliced tongue with a bright green sauce sharpened by lemon ($11) impressed, as did balanced black olive and tomato condiments that come with bread.
This stretch of Vernon Boulevard is dark at night, but dotted with bright restaurants like the original Testaccio, an unfancy neighborhood of Rome. Dinner pulls in a mix of lawyers (Queens courts are nearby), local families and mad-hatted hipsters.
The room is plated with stone and metal (the owners are in the construction business), but comfortable chairs and a wood-burning oven in the dining room make it friendly. Afterward, chocolate-coffee tortino ($8) is breathtakingly bittersweet, and good.
Testaccio has some low moments: over-topped pizza, over-priced desserts; and a few more waiters would be nice (there are too many busboys already). But it’s welcome.
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