Restaurant of the Week: Torrisi Italian Specialties

To call Torrisi Italian Specialties an Italian deli is like saying Dean & Deluca is a grocery store. Sure, they make a mean Italian hero -- with four, yes, four kinds of meat: pepperoni, ham, Genoa salami, and sopressata ($9) -- but the two guys behind the NoLIta nook have the knife skills to do much more. Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone, alums of Café Boulud, set out to re-invent low-maintenance, Americanized boot-country food, but they didn't turn to fancy foodstuffs and preparations, they looked to made-in-the-U.S.A. ingredients. The resulting restaurant, its walls lined with low-brow finds like Manhattan Special Espresso Coffee Soda and Parisi Bakery bread, serves utterly familiar food in its most perfect form: The roasted cauliflower with Progresso breadcrumbs ($3 per 1/4 lb.) is dotted with a hearty helping of rosemary, a mixed mushroom salad has the ideal Katz vinegar kick ($4 per 1/4 lb.), and the house-roasted turkey sandwich ($7 and up) is more flavorful than anything you've ever ordered at a deli counter, especially when you ask for it spicy. Though the tucked-away spot started off with just breakfast and lunch, it officially kicked off dinner service on March 9, with a nightly $45 five-course prix fixe (think chicken liver-stuffed ravioli and grapefruit Italian ice) that will leave you enough money for a Vena Cava dress -- if you can still fit into it after gorging on garlic bread, that is.

Torrisi Italian Specialties
250 Mulberry St.
(212) 965-0955
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