Locanda Verde

Locanda Verde, Andrew Carmellini's smash-hit restaurant in the Greenwich Hotel, bills itself as a casual neighborhood taverna. On one of the (hopefully) last scorching days of this endless summer, we stopped for lunch and nearly set up house there. Partly that feeling was due to the space, which perfectly pulls off a mix of casual rusticity (cookbooks scattered around, thrown-open windows) and clubby elegance (leather-button banquettes, thoughtful lighting). But the main reason was the food.

We started with a bowl of local tomatoes and watermelon tossed with smoked ricotta cheese. Tomatoes around these parts are peaking now, and this dish made excellent use of them, as the melon brought out their citrus-y sweetness and reminded us that tomatoes really are fruits. And we couldn't resist the delightful little lamb meatball sliders, which came with caprino cheese and delicate slivers of cucumber.

Next came orecchiette with duck sausage; broccoli rabe gave the dish a good crunch, while the sausage had a pleasing heat. The scampi ravioli had fluffy pockets of shrimp and ricotta, topped with rock shrimp and zucchini and bathed in a complex roasted tomato sauce.

Karen DeMasco, Locanda Verde's pastry chef, boasts nearly as many fans as Carmellini himself, and rightly so. Her lemon tart with buttermilk gelato and lemoncello granita, picked by New York Magazine as one of the city's five best desserts, looked simple but packed so much lemon flavor into such a creamy texture that you'd wonder how she does it if you weren't so busy eating it. And the fantasia di fragola --- a goblet of fior di latte gelato with strawberry and prosecco sorbet and a balsamic meringue --- happily lived up to its ambitious name.

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