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New York is full of Italian restaurants boasting they’re authentically representing one region or tiny corner of the country.
It’s a noble calling, but annoying when waiters insist a dish can only be made one way — as in, “No, you can’t have Bolognese sauce, we’re Sicilian.”
Which might be why Il Gradino, which opened last spring at 808 Lexington Ave. (at East 63rd Street), is packed night and day. Owner Diego Argudo — a several-decades veteran manager of Italian eateries including celeb-strewn Scalinatella — came up with the idea of a piacere options, which means “prepared according to your preference.”
It lets customers choose how they’d like certain pasta, meat and seafood dishes to be made, even if they’re outside the standard playbook.
Often when I ask for even minor variations at many Italian eateries — such as anchovies with penne and basil pesto, which doesn’t ordinarily include anchovies — the waiter makes a face. “I’ll talk to the chef,” is a common refrain.
But perhaps because Argudo is Ecuadorean-born, he didn’t feel the constraints of authenticity that straitjackets some Italian owners and chefs.
At Il Gradino, a snug and pretty 65-seater on the lower Upper East Side, “If somebody wants risotto with sausage, for example, we’ll do it for them,” Argudo says. “We always say yes. We want to make people comfortable.”
The chef is Carlos Inga, who’s worked Il Mulino and several other top Manhattan restaurants. His menu offers a kind of “greatest hits” lineup from Italy’s north and south. It lists four a piacere options — for risotto, chicken, Dover sole and veal medallions. For example, what style and sauce do you want with your veal? Marsala, francese, Milanese or pizzaiola? “It’s up to you,” Argudo says.
Dover sole can be had plain-grilled or in meunière or Dijon-mustard style. But the house is even more flexible than that. Devise a dish out of your own imagination and Argudo and Inga will do their best to make it real.
One customer said he was in the mood for pasta with vodka sauce but couldn’t decide on Bolognese or pesto, Argudo recalls. “I said, ‘We’ll do a little combination for you, and they were very happy.’ ” Salute.
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