New York has its share of century-old restaurants, but few have a history like One Fifth, which has retained the same name despite changing hands as many as a dozen times. Most recently, the address was home to Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, a Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich venture. Before that it was a seafood restaurant owned by Alfred Portale, of Gotham Bar & Grill fame. If you want to trace the location’s lineage back further than that, you can probably find what your looking for on its website, which also notes more importantly that the space is now in the capable hands of chef and restaurateur Marc Forgione.
The new menu features chickpea fries, listed for your convenience along with their Italian and French aliases, panelle and panisse; the fries are dusted with fennel pollen. Smoking plays a role in the linguine with Manila clams and gremolata, but not in the way you might expect: It’s the noodles, not the sauce, that receive the smoke. Ravioli are paired with pork belly and botarga. A section of the menu is given over to pinsa, the oval-shaped pizzas that began to appear in Rome over the last two decades.
One Fifth Avenue (at 8th St.), 646-476-5420.
See also…
Gotham Bar & Grill Is Back … Kind of
