L'Artusi.(Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well)(Restaurant review)

In 1891, Pellegrino Artusi, at the age of seventy-one, having retired from the silk trade, published an exhaustive, droll cookbook spanning every region of his newly unified Italy, "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well"--an Italian "Joy of Cooking," with attitude. (From the preface: "Cooking is a troublesome sprite. . . . I may discreetly assume that my dishes have been generally well received, and that to my great fortune few people, thus far, have cursed me for stomach aches or other phenomena that decency forbids me to mention.")

In adopting his name for their follow-up to Dell'Anima, the chef Gabe Thompson and the sommelier Joe Campanale portend substance and variety, home cooking for the soul. While the clever menu mirrors, if refractively, its namesake's philosophies, the decor has an identity crisis. A dimly lit splatter-painted gray brick wall gives way to a sort of Upper East Side dining corridor, with a Ralph Lauren Home-style wide-striped ceiling and red-chintz-and-ticking-stripe upholstery. In the back, a bright-white subway-tiled open kitchen is edged with a long marble bar, where diners are encouraged to watch the crudo apprentices in action. (Artusi: "Pity those ladies who receive guests in semi-darkness, and in whose homes you stumble into the furniture and know not ...