Torrisi Italian Specialties Visited 12/22/10 5 Forks

Torrisi Italian Specialties  250 Mulberry St, (between Spring St & Prince St), Manhattan, NY 10012

 Instead of giving each other x-mas gifts, Dan and I usually treat ourselves to a nice, semi-expensive dinner each year.  Torrisi was the perfect place and probably one of the best x-mas meals we've ever had.  The place is a deli by day and at night they have a set prix-fixe menu at $50 person.  They post the menu on the chalkboard outside and there are no substitutions allowed.  Since they do not take reservations, I had read that people generally start lining up at 5:30pm to be one of the first people seated (they open at 6pm).  Dan and I got there at 5:30 and there was not a single person in line (this could be due to the fact that it was a Weds and it was freezing cold outside).  The hostess came and took our names at 5:45pm and told us to come back close to 6.  We were promptly seated inside and I understood why on a crowded night the wait can be up to 2 hours.  The place is tiny with at most 8 tables inside. 
As soon as we sat down, I checked out the menu for the night.  It started with a 4 course anti-pasta course: mozzarella and toasted garlic bread, followed by roasted brussel sprouts with jingle bell peppers, seafood salad, and liver pate served with soft pretzel bread.  They were all small in size but made up for it in taste.  You can never go wrong with mozzarella cheese and as someone who hates brussel sprouts, these were roasted to perfection and didn't even taste like a brussel sprout at all.  The seafood salad was like a ceviche with raw scallops marinated in onion and lime juice.  You could definitely tell that the scallops were fresh and not frozen.  Surprisingly, I liked the liver pate with pretzel bread the most.  The pate was extremely smooth (I've had grainy pate which makes the whole experience gross) and it came with a side of sauteed red onions which were reduced in red wine and the bread was so freakin soft that I could have eaten an entire basked of them.  
The anti-pasta course was followed by a linguine and clams with tobacco flakes.  I thought that the flakes would have been overpowering but there was just the right amount of flakes to give off some heat but it didn't ruin the dish.  The only choice you have for the night is either fish or chicken for the main entree. I got the yellowtail sole with black truffle mushrooms and Dan go the Devil's chicken with Evan's yogurt.  While I enjoyed my fish (it was two fillets baked with breadcrumbs on top of it), Dan's chicken was out of this world.  The waiter even commented that it was going to be a very talked about dish in the future.  It was beyond moist and juicy and the red paprika like dusting really kicked it up a notch.  It was probably best chicken dish I have had in years.  I should mention that we had opted for the $25/pp wine pairing with our meal and by this time we were about 4 glasses of wine deep.  All the wines selected for the meals were amazing. I am normally not a white wine drinker but they brought out this Ecole No. 41 that was practically tasted like water (but in a good way).  It went down waaay to smoothly.  They were pretty generous with their pours and they even re-filled our glasses at times.  The meal ends with a dish of homemade pastries, which initially sounds kind of lame, but they were the best damn pastries I've had in a while.  They were all piping warm and there was two of each kind, so you didn't have to fight over them.  They had a popover with cream filling, a rainbow type cake that tasted like marzipan, mini cheesecakes, and cookies with a chocolate-kiss like filling.  It was the perfect finish to the meal.  
What also made the whole experience great was the waitstaff.  The busboys are essentially the waitstaff and they were extremely knowledgeable about all the dishes and the wine list.  I love that they get the opportunity to be really involved with restaurant beyond just taking our plates away.  The whole meal set us back about $200 with tip and tax, which in NYC isn't totally expensive but it's still a nice chunk of change, but it was worth every penny and for what you get, it's probably worth a whole lot more.