The Perfect Order at Ridgewood’s Hopping New Trattoria
Handmade pastas and hearty plates for under $25 at Il Gigante
It’s only been open for about a month, but ll Gigante Trattoria (880 Woodward Avenue, at Catalpa Avenue), a Bolognese-leaning trattoria that took over the Porcelain space in Ridgewood, feels like an established local favorite. The place was buzzing on a recent rainy Wednesday night, all tables filled by 6:30 p.m. or so, the music lively but not too loud. Co-owner, partner, and Ridgewood resident Lorenzo Pizzoli worked the room and greeted guests at the door.
“We’re a hundred percent a neighborhood restaurant,” Pizzoli told Eater. “The vast majority, I’m talking like 95 percent of the people who come in this place are from Ridgewood. We’re constantly seating people at tables and they’re sitting next to people that they know. It’s a beautiful thing.”
The local love is not really a surprise. Losing Porcelain was a blow to many in the area. “I went a little bananas when it closed,” said Pizzoli. “This is a pretty special space. If you live here you have a connection to it.” The new team didn’t mess around too much with the old-school vibe of the interior, which was used as a location for Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.
The Il Gigante menu is stacked with bangers, especially in the pasta section, where eight dishes vie for attention — particularly since none of them cost more than $20. You could eat here a couple of times a week and not get bored. Or go broke.
All the pasta is made fresh in house by chef Davide Bugamelli and his team, all are sauced and or stuffed in various ways. Portions are ample, too, so you can comfortably split a pasta or two depending on the size of your party, then sample some things from elsewhere on the menu. The salads arrive piled high, the snacky stuff satisfies, and the main courses — a pork chop, a chicken, a branzino — top out at a reasonable $25.
Although Il Gigante’s gentle pricing encourages exploration, you still want to get it right. Here, then, are your ideal meals for several scenarios, starting with the best dish.
Dining solo
Eating alone at the bar is one of the distinct pleasures of any great neighborhood place, and the one dish that any meal at Il Gigante should include — especially if it’s your meal’s only dish — is a Bolognese specialty not often seen in New York, the Gramigna alla Salsiccia ($18). This plate is a mess of short, thick, twisty noodles in a peppy pink sauce, loaded with crumbles of sweet sausage from nearby butcher DiMarco’s.
“We are lucky to have a chef who worked for twenty years in trattorias in Bologna,” said Pizzoli, who is Bolognese as well. “Not even back home do you find many gramigna as good as ours.” Shots fired, Bologna!
Dinner for two
With the gramigna secured as your base, you should add the Tortelloni Burro e Salvia ($17), a pile of plump, oversized pasta pillows filled with creamy ricotta and lolling in a luxurious buttery bath. It makes for a luscious counterpoint to the zippier, chewier gramigna.
Depending on how hungry you’re feeling, also get either the Pecorina salad ($15) of radicchio, oranges, stealth anchovies, and so, so much cheese; or the Cotoletta alla Bolognese ($25), the most baller dish on the menu, a sprawling slab of pork, breaded and cooked in broth (“the proper Bolognese way,” as Pizzoli put it), then blanketed with funky aged prosciutto and melting Parmigiano Reggiano. This dish a lot, but it’s also delicious.
Three-, four-, and more-tops
All of the above, plus the Polpette al Sugo ($13), a boat of dense meatballs in red sauce; and or the Salsiccia e Fagioli all’Uccelletto ($14), a snappy DiMarco sausage on a bed of saucy beans; and or the Pappardelle al Ragu ($19), starring the thinnest version of this pasta I think I’ve ever been served.
Scott Lynch
The desserts all read pretty generic — tiramisu, flourless chocolate cake, a vanilla affogato — but the cannoli are incredible. The shells are from iconic Ridgewood bakery Rudy’s, the just-sweet-enough ricotta is made in house, and they’re scented with a sprig of rosemary, which surprised me at first glance but was actually … perfect.
