Olive You Frankie's 457

The house olive oil at Frankie's 457 in Carroll Gardens is seriously addictive and tasty. At dinner the other week, I couldn't stop dipping things into it, mostly hunks of crusty bread, but also portions of my dinner which I'll get into shortly. It didn't help matters that Frankie's breadstuffs comes from the Sullivan Street Bakery, which is completely awesome in its own right. There was a period of my life where I could walk over to the Bakery to get rectangles of the potato and piazza bianco for lunch, and that made me very happy. So apparently the owners went to Italy and found a small family-owned producer to make this bright and fruity green nectar of the gods. I should have bought a bottle, what was I thinking?!?!!?

Dan and I shared the house antipasto plate as a starter. It's $12 or $14 and a great deal. You get two each of cheese, meat, vegetable and olives, all chef's choice. We were presented with a nice sized oval plate that was draped with thin slices of prosciutto. A very generous portion. On top were a couple slices each of sweet and hot sopressata. The cheese part consisted of two nice wedges, one was hard and crumbly like parmigiano, but not. Possibly pecorino? The other cheese was semi-soft and I would have remembered had I actually heard what the waitress told us. No I take that back, I still would have forgotten. Our veggies consisted of crispy green beans with garlic and sauteed cremini mushrooms. I wound up eating all of the latter and all the olives, since DMR doesn't do either. There were a lot of mushrooms on this plate. I wanted to order an additional side, but I was thankfully talked out of it.

We went with two vegetarian pasta dishes, which we shared as our mains. We both like a variety of tastes. First was a gnocchi with red sauce and ricotta. Simple and delicious and as gnocci often is, super filling. The other dish was a homemade fettucine with fava beans and breadcrumbs. Though I found it to be a tad on the bland side, I loved the texture of the homemade noodles and the soupy sauce made for good sopping. I downed an espresso after dinner and we shared a slice of Italian cheesecake (our second in as many weeks, but neither living up to the one served at the fabled Cafe Reggio according to DMR). To drink I had a couple bourbon lemonades, the first of which was a little heavy on the club soda, but the second one was perfect. I am still stuffed from this meal.