Enoteca Maria

I like to play silly games with myself and give myself inane challenges. One of my ideas was eating in all 5 boros within a 6 month period. Obviously, I eat in Manhattan all the time. I always have an excuse to eat in Queens and with friends living in Brooklyn, it's not abnormal to spend an evening there as well. The challenge was in essence eating in The Bronx and Staten Island because there's no reason to ever go there. Interestingly enough, I went to City Island, which is in the Bronx, for one of my birthday dinners. Staten Island was the only boro left on my list. I recently surfed on to nycnosh and read an entry where they recapped 2007 in terms of food. Enoteca Maria was on their list and it's located on SI! I decided that it would be the location for an impromptu celebratory dinner. A dinner for 5 turned into a dinner for 2 due to busy schedules and last minute cancellations. Feisty, who's always up to trying new restaurants, joined me in my little adventure. The last time I was on the island was 10 years ago, when an ex and I thought taking the ferry would be romantic. We had to pay a one way fare back then. I didn't know the MTA has cut fares altogether since. Feisty and I dorkily asked where to buy tickets.

After getting off the ferry, the restaurant is literally a 5 minute walk from the terminal. Once we were inside the winebar, we were greeted by a friendly hostess. The restaurant made me feel like I was in a different city. (Staten Island is part of NYC!) I could have sworn that I was in DC. We sat down and were given menus. The interesting concept of Enoteca Maria is that it's owned by 6 Italian grandmothers, representing different parts of Italy. The menu changes every day, depending on who's in the kitchen. It's wonderful concept because you can always go back for new dishes. We were there for Milanese cooking. The staff is extremely friendly and act as if they genuinely care if your dish gets cold or if you don't have enough water. Feisty and I decided to start with an antipasto meat platter. I got super excited when I saw Spaghetti con Bottarga on the menu. I was talking to a co-worker about a Taiwanese snack, which is basically baked roe chips and he insisted that it was Italian and told me that it's called Bottarga. But until Saturday, I've never seen that at an Italian restaurant. Feisty ended up getting it as an entree because I was more interested in the black taglitellie with salmon and leeks.

After our menus were taken away, the waitress brought us a platter of the house appetizers. It consisted of foccacia, anchovies, chickpeas, black olives, green olives, sausage with potatoes, and capers with fennel and olives. It sounds like more food than it is. They were little plates. However, after we saw our meat platter, we both realized that we were going to be eating a lot. We had proscuitto, hot soppressata, speck and bresaola paired with Romano, Parmasean, mozzarella and fresh cherry tomatoes. I love Italian meats and I still had trouble finishing everything. We were eating slowly too, so slow that our waitress brought out our pastas before we finished the platter because she didn't want our food to get cold. Both our pasta dishes were a bit oilier than we expected. I thoroughly enjoyed my dish nevertheless. There was a healthy helping of salmon and I finished the whole plate. It's a shame though cause I didn't have enough room in my stomach for dessert. The meal was decently priced at about $35/person. We didn't get wine since were drinking later in the evening. I would most definitely go back. I want to try Sicilian cooking, specially the torta nutella and some bread dish. I'm gonna drag more of my friends to go even though no one likes Italian food. =( It's only 20 minutes away from downtown Manhattan!
http://enotecamaria.com/