Scarpetta.(Restaurant review)

In a town full of whiz-kid chefs, Scott Conant is an anomaly; at thirty-seven, he cooks like an older man--wisely, taking his time, knowing exactly what he's doing. Having established his mastery of Italian cuisine at L'Impero (where he pulled off the oxymoron of refined rustic) and Alto (where he veered into esoterica), Conant has now relocated, jettisoning the stuffy drapes-and-sconces trappings of his previous restaurants for Scarpetta, a streamlined space on the border of the meatpacking district. Think billionaire's farmhouse: high rafters; a peaked, retractable roof; mirrors tilting from the walls, strapped in place with giant leather belts.

The most telling design feature, however, is the rows of Edison bulbs, filaments exposed, suspended in glass-and-steel boxes. As a waiter will explain, Conant has decided to strip things down; the philosophy is "Nothing flashy." It takes cojones (or, given Conant's field of cuisine, coglioni) to serve as your signature dish something as banal as spaghetti with tomato sauce (and to charge twenty-four dollars for it), but Conant's version of the Italian warhorse--perfected at L'Impero and reincarnated here--is a small marvel: earthy and sweet, a chiaroscuro of bright and dark notes, the tomatoes and basil achieving a ...