Bar Ferdinando will likely be a real all-day café, with pastries, espresso, drinks, sandwiches, and, after all, panelle.
Photograph: Noah Fecks/Courtesy of Bar Ferdinando
When Francesco “Frank” Buffa, the proprietor and operator of the 121-year-old Ferdinando’s Focacceria, immediately closed up store for good final winter, the collective response from followers, locals, and anybody involved with vanishing New York was grief, rapidly adopted by questions round what would occur to the area. There was loads of curiosity: Buffa, who owns the constructing, was getting provides slipped underneath the restaurant’s unusually slim doorways. Sal Lamboglia, who owns Café Spaghetti throughout the road and two different eating places shut by, acquired a name from a neighborhood pal and sat down with Buffa for a two-hour afternoon chat with the lights off at Ferdinando’s, “speaking about household, life expertise, upbringings, children,” Lamboglia says. Quickly after, in the midst of dinner service, his cellphone rang. “Frank mentioned, ‘Sal, are you prepared?’ That was it.” He had the keys the next weekend.
“I’m not resurrecting Ferdinando’s,” Lamboglia is fast to make clear. “I’m not doing that.” After a yr of sifting by way of the images, relics, dishware, and bottles of vintage amari that had been left behind, endeavor some mandatory upgrades and renovations, putting in a correct bar, and giving the area a number of coats of paint, Lamboglia will as an alternative open Bar Ferdinando on April 15. There’s a not-negligible quantity of out of doors strain that comes with opening in a spot with over a century of historical past related to core reminiscences of crispy chickpea panelle sandwiches and Manhattan Particular on draft. Lamboglia has heard the issues: yellow partitions and maroon beadboard stay, a lot of the art work stays, and the mismatched tiles stay. However relatively than Buffa’s previous household images, there now grasp Lamboglia’s previous household images. Nonetheless, the place carries an analogous spirit as earlier than. “Being in right here makes you notice this man, Frank, spent 53 years in right here, in a single place, proper?” says Lamboglia. “You don’t discover that.”
Jackie De La Barrera is in control of pastries and baked items.
The area has gotten a refresh, however all within the service of honoring its earlier tenant.
Espresso and pastries will give technique to drinks and snacks because the day goes on.
The mismatched tile ground stays.
Panelle had been essential on the menu.
Pictures Noah Fecks/Courtesy of Bar Ferdinando
Buffa’s household is Sicilian, Lamboglia’s background — he grew up in an immigrant household in Bensonhurst — is from Naples, and the meals at Bar Ferdinando will likely be regionally agnostic. To begin, will probably be a real all-day bar, opening at 11 a.m. with baked items from pastry chef Jackie De La Barrera (who has led pastry applications at Agi’s Counter and Radio Bakery) like bomboloni crammed with banana or pistachio cream, semolina cake, and prosciutto-and-Parm scones. De La Barrera’s focaccia will likely be served in the course of the day, together with Lamboglia’s neighborhood-famous seafood salad with octopus, calamari, lobster, potatoes, parsley, lemon, and olive oil. And count on panelle and rice balls that may be sliced, grilled, and served with marinara. (The dinner menu, which remains to be underneath development, will likely be a continuation of the identical.)
The marble café tables will likely be obtainable for a fast shot of espresso or for lingering. However as an alternative of Manhattan Particular on faucet, a home made model with contemporary espresso and seltzer will come from Ricardo Echeverri’s bar program. Echeverri, presently the final supervisor at Lamboglia’s Swoony’s across the nook, has been making drinks across the metropolis for years — at spots together with Fireplace, Minetta Tavern, and Frenchette. He’s developed an inventory of lighter aperitivi, a limoncello spritz, a Milan-esque Campari and soda, and a fennel-forward highball, in addition to classics just like the Little Italy (a Cynar-inflected Manhattan), a home martini served on the rocks, and an Italian espresso martini.
Because the climate warms, visitors will have the ability to get pleasure from these drinks within the yard underneath two fig bushes, the sounds of the BQE speeding previous within the distance, for so long as they’d like. “Wish to pop in for a cocktail or for a espresso? Go forward, all day,” Lamboglia says. “We don’t shut.”
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