Convivio

Chicken liver crostini with balsamic-stewed onions

Photograph: Roxana Marroquin

A chef inherits an excellent restaurant, and makes it better. By Randall LaneRather than waiting for the critics to have their say, Convivio, the restaurant, has published Convivio, the magazine, to tell its own story. I skimmed it while sitting at the bar, reading a breathless profile of the maître d’ (“I know where the bread is kept; I know where to get water”) and a step-by-step recipe for squid-ink pasta. Usually, I scoff at such in-house vanities, but at Convivio, the reincarnation of the respected L’Impero, the backstory needs to be told. The restaurant’s opening marks the final round in a long (and confusing) game of musical chefs: Scott Conant left L’Impero and Alto to start Scarpetta, Michael White left the vaunted Fiamma to take Conant’s place.

The results of the swaps have been mixed. Conant’s Scarpetta is a blockbuster. Fiamma, under new chef Fabio Trabocchi, has taken a step back. White’s revision of the Northern Italian twin, Alto, is solid. With Convivio, White has taken the restaurant that launched Conant into stardom and improved it, creating robust Southern Italian dining that ranks among the city’s best.

The easiest way to overhaul L’Impero would have been cosmetic, but owner Chris Cannon did little more than add an entrance of metallic burnt orange to the white-tablecloth dining room that’s tucked clandestinely into an apartment building in Tudor City. Similarly, the 550-bottle wine list, save a few Sicilian and other Southern Italian additions, is unchanged.

Instead, White makes his case through the food, steering diners to the four-course prix fixe, which at $59 (down from $64 at L’Impero) rates as a bargain. The idea is to engage the diner in the classic Italian Sunday-night routine of an appetizer, pasta, entrée and dessert, though my waiter insisted that I could have any four courses I wanted. Even four pastas? “Anything!”

Next time, I’ll take him up on that. Not that the antipasti didn’t deliver. Though choices ranged from seafood (a delicate salad of head-on shrimp, pillowy clams and mussels) to saffron-scented arancini, White’s strength was the offal. Duck hearts were seamlessly integrated into a smokey lentil stew, with the ever-appetizing addition of a runny egg and an oil-soaked crouton to soak up the juices. A giant starter of chicken liver crostini, meanwhile, presented slabs of toasted country bread slathered with meaty liver mousse and onions stewed in a balsamic-heavy reduction.

What will haunt me, however, are the diverse and exceptional house-made pastas, with a texture as smooth as the supplest leather. Tiny saffron-flavored gnocchetti were expertly firm, anointed with crabmeat and rich sea urchin, with chili flakes, scallion and garlic adding the slightest kick. The linguine with clams and bread crumbs (currently on the menu with sardines and raisins) incorporates the standards—al dente pasta, plump littlenecks, parsley, wine, garlic—but in a proportion that yields a wonderfully briny broth that I lapped up with both bread and a spoon. The chef also gets clever, infusing small semolina shells (cicatelli) with buffalo ricotta and lavishing them with a fruity tomato sauce, a twist on conventional stuffed pasta.

As the meal progressed, such simple excellence—part of what makes Southern Italian cooking arguably the world’s most popular—proved impressively consistent. I’ve had better pork chops than White’s prayer-book-thick number, seasoned with little more than salt, rosemary and its own jus, but none recently. Better still was a loosely breaded turbot fillet with a deliciously oily pesto and sweet, raisin-festooned eggplant, which exhibited the kind of studied casualness Italians have spent decades honing.

Throughout the meal, the earnest and knowledgeable staff seemed to be watching at all times (when I called over the sommelier, he had already memorized what dishes I ordered). Thus, while I avoid chocolate cake passionately—every waiter in New York seems to recommend it, no matter the restaurant, and it’s never as good as they say—my server’s insistence that it was moist (check), not oversweet (with a layer of ricotta) and flavorful (with candied orange rinds) proved correct. Pastry chef Heather Bertinetti also produced a luscious tartaletta, accented with sweet nectarines and buttery almond paste.

With White and his fellow jobhopping chefs continuing to settle in, there is still change afoot. But White has accomplished something rare and unexpected, in taking something already quite excellent to new heights.