A Mano, New Italian Trattoria,
Opens In The Warehouse District
A couple of months ago, Chef Adolfo Garcia kicked up some dust when he said that his soon-to-open new restaurant would be the only restaurant in New Orleans to serve true Italian food. I took that with a grain of salt, having met enough Italian chefs to know that all of them believe their food is the only true Italian cooking. (Other than, of course, that of their mothers.)
The funny thing about this is that Adolfo is not Italian, but Panamanian-Creole. (He was born here and grew up here.) But during his tour of duty after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, he spent a good deal of time cooking in Italy. Anyone who does that (as I can myself attest) has his eyes opened. We see that what's eaten in Italy is nothing like what we call Italian food here, even when the local version is very good.
The name of the place is A Mano, which translates "by hand." (It also places the restaurant first in alphabetical order in any listing of restaurants, right after the restaurants with numbers in lieu of names. ) Reading the press release, I get the impression that this will be a northern Italian kind of place, with lots of meats roasting and simmering. They make a big deal about the salumi--the cured and smoked Italian meats--and say that there's a display case where all the cold cuts will be aging. This has certainly become a trend locally, with Cochon doing the Cajun version of it, and John Besh making a bunch of it at his new Domenica.
The restaurant opened a couple of days ago, I think. It's in the former Hipstix on the corner of Tchoupitoulas an St. Joseph, a block from La Boca. I pass that corner every day after my radio show, and have watched what looked like dry runs for the past week or so. The doors looked fully open on Tuesday. The chef-partner with Adolfo is Joshua Smith.
A Mano. Warehouse District: 870 Tchoupitoulas 504-208-9280.