One way to think of Baffo, the fine-dining restaurant on the ground floor of Eataly, is that it’s Babbo Lite. Babbo, apart from being the name of the flagship restaurant in Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich’s empire, means “daddy” in Italian. Baffo is sort of a condensed version of Babbo, with some dozen dishes imported directly from the New York menu and seven more that look awfully familiar. In Italian, baffo is a term for mustache, so another way to think of the restaurant is “Daddy’s Mustache.”
Still, Baffo is a slightly stealthy importation of the Batali-Bastianich brand. Staffers don’t bandy their names about, and their faces don’t grace the menu, though a portrait of that great literary Italophile Ernest Hemingway does. I wonder how Papa would feel about some of the other antipasti, like an absurdly plated dish of sardines, each fillet lying parallel to a bump of bread crumbs bordered by dabs of bagna cauda and a streak of lobster oil, a dish whose components are impossible to enjoy in harmony. Or what about a lamb-tongue vinaigrette with little coins of gray muscle mingling indistinguishably with beech mushrooms and the flow of a three-minute egg? That dish had a nice acidic kick but no salt to bring it home.
44 E. Grand312-521-8701eataly.com/baffo
