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Dining Briefs | Recently Opened

Testaccio Ristorante

Testaccio serves contemporary Roman cuisine.Credit...Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
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.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Testaccio Ristorante. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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