Italian Stalwart Ferdinando’s Focacceria Is a Nostalgic Nod to Sicily & More News Here

Founded in 1904, Ferdinando’s Focacceria is town’s oldest Sicilian restaurant and likewise one of many longest operating Italian eating places in NYC — outdone solely by Rao’s (1896) and Bamonte’s (1900). It started as a lunch counter promoting small spherical sandwiches to longshoremen who labored on the close by Columbia Waterfront docks on the western fringe of Cobble Hill. This fashion of sandwich mirrored the focaccerias of Palermo, Sicily’s capital, and two stuffings had been the most typical: cow spleen, ricotta, and shredded caciocavallo cheese; and the chickpea-stuffed fried ravioli known as panelle, typically with potatoes. Both historic sandwiches are nonetheless out there at Ferdinando’s Focacceria, positioned at 151 Union Street, simply west of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

I hadn’t eaten there for over a decade, and had heard from numerous sources that it had turn out to be mediocre (in reality, I hadn’t been impressed the final time I ate there). But I had to see for myself, whereas additionally craving the types of dishes that make seafood- and vegetable-heavy Sicilian delicacies distinctive. The present proprietor is the restaurant’s fourth: Frank Huff, who has been operating the place since 1975, now aided by his three sons.

You could acknowledge the deep darkish area from when it made an look in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The stamped tin ceiling, rickety tables flanked by bent-wood chairs, historic pictures of Sicily, rustic brick partitions, and opalescent globe lights show restaurant design rules of a century in the past. It all provides up to create a room that feels prefer it was a perpetually working-class joint with no pretensions.

A good friend and I had been seated within the again, subsequent to an open window via which we might see a neighbor planting her yard backyard. First to arrive was a seafood salad ($23) that was primarily made up of squid and octopus, crunchy celery, and an olive-oil dressing. It was excellent, supple and pungent with garlic, particularly as served with the small spherical rolls made on the premises, the identical ones used within the sandwiches. A baked artichoke ($13) quickly adopted, charred on the sides of the sturdier leaves, with a seasoned bread crumb stuffing so profuse and moist it certified as pudding. It wasn’t stunning, although, as a result of bread crumbs are sometimes used all over the place in Sicilian delicacies, typically as a extra reasonably priced (and sensible) substitute for grated cheese.

We chased our seafood salad and stuffed artichoke with a vastedda ($10), a type of longshoreman’s sandwiches, this one concentrating on spleen and two cheeses on a roll slathered in olive oil. The spleen tastes like grainy liver, a bit funky in a means however softened by the smeared ricotta and shredded caciocavallo. (Back in Sicily, there’s no ricotta within the sandwich, a Neapolitan ingredient that will have been added at Ferdinando’s for the primary time.)

Next got here one of many restaurant’s big rice balls, tremendous crisp on the skin and filled with floor beef and peas. We went for the deluxe version ($10), which comes smothered in tomato sauce and cheese. Yes, one in every of these glistening orbs may very well be a full meal, particularly in the event you name for an additional roll or two — which a server will cheerfully present — to sop up the sauce.

Of the pastas and different most important programs, some strictly Sicilian and a few not, we went for essentially the most Sicilian: pasta con sarde ($20) is exclusive to the island, pulverizing sardines and fennel into a savory tomato sauce sweetened with raisins and topped with bread crumbs. This model is refined, and fewer canned-tasting (which isn’t essentially a dangerous factor) than the extra assertive model out there at, say, Joe’s of Avenue U in Gravesend, one other Brooklyn Sicilian mainstay.

Indeed, because the oldest Sicilian restaurant on the town, the menu at Ferdinando’s has assimilated extra influences from close by areas of Italy like Calabria, Bari, and Campania via the years through different immigrants than these Sicilian eating places which launched within the 50s and later. This is very true on the very latest Sicilian eating places on the town, locations like Pane Pasta and Amuni, the place the menu displays the meals eaten in up to date Palermo, moderately than a century-old view of it.

Nevertheless, as a nostalgic reflection of the Italian meals that fed generations of longshoremen working on the Brooklyn docks, Ferdinando’s Focacceria is unsurpassed, and it was a actual pleasure to eat it whereas mulling over the historical past of the neighborhood. We completed up with a superb cannoli ($8) — crunchy, and stuffed to order with ricotta that was fluffier and brisker tasting, and pleasantly missing the candied fruit and chocolate chips typically added to fancier variations in pastry outlets — after which strolled down to the waterfront, the place big container-port cranes have changed the bustling human scene of a century in the past.

Interested in different Sicilian eating places and locations that discover Sicilian regional delicacies? See this newly revealed map.

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