Civetta

When Sfoglia opened on the Upper East Side in 2006, it immediately stood out from the many unremarkable trattorias around it. Its refined-rustic food, from husband-and-wife team Ron and Colleen Suhanosky (he cooks savory, she cooks sweet), was well worth queuing up—and paying a few extra bucks—for. And with Italian restaurants faring better than most these days, a downtown follow-up to that uptown hit must have seemed like an easy hit.

But Civetta, the soulless sophomore venture that opened this summer in collaboration with the owners of Via Quadronno, squanders all the goodwill the Suhanoskys had banked. On the edge of Little Italy, it blends in far too well with its tourist-trap neighbors. What sets Civetta apart, most of all, are the tin-ear prices. The enormous menu is so heavily focused on antipasti you’re inclined to ignore everything else. Though many entrées creep into the $30s, small plates are priced mostly in the high teens, so a tapas-style meal will still cost you plenty. New York diners are of course accustomed to paying sky-high prices for upmarket food served in elegant settings, but neither the cooking nor the dining room here fits those criteria.

With ochre walls, plaster arched ceilings, and vintage posters from Italy, Civetta is blandly attractive—Williams-Sonoma does Tuscany. The food, too, needs a personality transfusion. Behind intriguing menu descriptions lurk some dead-simple duds. “Potato, anchovy, rosemary fritto misto” turns out to be a monochrome plate of limp fried anchovies perched on a mountain of chalky matchstick potatoes. “Eggplant peach parmigiano” is basically bland caponata loosely bound together with melted cheese. House-cured tuna with toasted almonds arrives as a few slices of translucent fish with a sprinkling of nuts—while the silky texture is right, the flavor is mostly absent.

The food at Civetta suffers from a crisis of both vision and execution. Spaghetti—in a barely-there sauce of hazelnuts and ricotta salata with advertised eggplant missing entirely—was boiled one night to an unpalatable mush, while gnocchi in run-of-the-mill pesto were far too chewy.

Entrées were the clumsiest dishes (and the most absurdly priced). A $29 pork scaloppine, pounded too thick, was caked in a dense, soggy crust with a messy salad of grated carrots slathered on top. Meanwhile, a few head-on garlic-drenched shrimp served with gritty, soupy chickpea puree will set you back an astounding $35.

Dessert, a Sfoglia strong suit, also falls short downtown. While a miniature pine-nut and caramel tart and a slice of sweet, spongy cake topped with syrup-soaked peaches are both fine palate cleansers, neither leaves more than a passing impression. Only Civetta’s beautifully crusty sourdough bread manages to live up to its forerunner’s standards. It was brought down, our waiter admitted, from the mother ship on Lexington Avenue.

Cheat sheet

Drink this: A light and refreshing Piage rosé, $38, is a reasonable wine from the long, pricey list of Italian bottles.

Eat this: Stick to dessert: the pine-nut and caramel tart and the peach cake

Sit here: Civetta’s antipasti nibbles are more appropriate for the basement lounge, a clubby nod to the neighborhood (and the draw that may rescue this place). The seating in the dining room—with good sight lines wherever you are—features better lighting and a view of the street.

Conversation piece: Civetta means “owl,” which explains the restaurant’s cartoonish logo and the owl-print plates that hang as decor—not to mention the venue’s night-owl hours (it’s open until 2am).

See more Restaurant reviews