A Plague of Red Sauce: New York's Bad Italian

According to Menupages, there are over 800 Italian restaurants in Manhattan alone. Walking around any random neighborhood -- oh, let's just say Yorkville on the Upper East Side -- one may encounter 13 Italian restos in a representative five-block stretch of Second Avenue. This includes what was once my beloved home coffee shop DTUT, which has transformed into Caffe Notte ("Whoever changed it is the biggest fucker in the world," opines one gentle Yelper). That didn't stop Notte from getting in New York mag's best-of issue, despite the few customers I ever see there. But aside from that lamentable case, why are there so many bad to mediocre Italian restaurants in Manhattan?

Even in Yorkville, there are decent examples of unambitious red-sauce Italian -- Quattro Gatti has been around forever, and there's always Tony's di Napoli if you want a meatball the size of a horse's head. But nobody's making a special trip to the Upper East Side to visit such places. Yorkville is something of a worst-case scenario ... bad Italian tends to mass where the neighborhood has either lost or never had much indigenous character. (I'm discounting Manhattan's Little Italy as a tourist attraction, of course.)

But even in hipster-infested areas, upscale hives, or ethnic enclaves, you often can't go more than a couple blocks without encountering another establishment gamely putting out the red-checkered tablecloths and poorly rendered Neapolitan harlequins. Menus tend to your basic pasta food groups and Every Available Animal Alla Parmigiana. If they get really crazy, there's a fish entree, but more likely you get shrimp pureed into shrimpy ravioli. Or you have the lowly potato gnocchi, which can be a transportingly savory comfort food when done well, but will more likely taste like a wad of recently amputated polyps. Unless you're patronizing one of the surprisingly rare high-end joints or a kitchen overseen by a celebrity chef, from place to place your choices will vary only in the arrangement of the same ingredients.

Yes, there are lots and lots of Italian people in New York, but it's not like they're genetically hardwired to consume only the Americanized version of their national cuisine. They may be programmed by traditional family dinners, but I'd be willing to bet the incidence of Italians eating at Italian restaurants is not much (or not at all) higher than the stats for non-Italian New Yorkers. And yes, I know there are plenty of "real" Italian places outside of Manhattan, like Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, for example.

Perhaps the cause lies within Italian food itself, or rather with our American version of same. Take out the regional idiosyncrasies of Italian cooking and you're left with a bland, friendly, inoffensive style of eating -- a universal adapter of mild sauces, simple preparations, lots of starch and heavy stuff sticking to our Yankee ribs. It's pretty much the same thing with Mexican and Chinese, which could easily contest the New York crown with Italian on the fast-food level at least. The National Restaurant Association once articulated the obvious:

Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) cuisines have indeed joined the mainstream. These three cuisines have become so ingrained in the American culture that they are no longer foreign to the American palate. According to the study, more than nine out of 10 consumers are familiar with and have tried these foods, and about half report eating them frequently. The research also indicates that Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) have become so adapted to such an extent that "authenticity" is no longer a concern to customers.

I actually like Italian food -- even basic red-sauce cuisine -- and I'll continue to eat it with gusto. But that doesn't mean I have to like it when every Manhattan restaurant property has a 50% chance of flipping to Italian at any given moment. It's not as if Manhattan lacks for other options, so please, Mr. Aspiring Restaurateur: Consider something else for your new fusion palace.