Everything but the Red Checked Tablecloth

Spaghetti and meatballs, real spaghetti and meatballs, the marinara just sweet enough, the meatballs dense with beef and pork, the broccoli rabe soft and bitter and flowery with garlic, the artichoke drenched in lemon butter, the calamari chewy but not too, the fetuccini with mushrooms containing more mushrooms than fetuccini, the garlic bread crunchy, the Cornish game hens grilled with rosemary and served with mashed potatoes, and the two bottles of Fat Cat cabernet from Trader Joe's on Union Square corked and poured by a happy waiter who tastes the wine himself and says "mmmm, well, you know, I get licorice." (But Plotnik knew the waiter wouldn't like the wine when he learned it cost $5 a bottle.)

Pisticci's in TGBZWZ's soon-to-be-old neighborhood of Broadway and 124th St, will be a place we come back to again and again. It's everything but the red tablecloths and chianti bottles, but a new generation of great cooks has pushed this food forward.

BZWZ and Ducknik are finishing Day Two of painting Bron's new room. Her new neighborhood is more real -- projects, West Indian and Puerto Rican accents on the streets, great restaurant we have to try -- the Malecon, where everyone seems to be eating fried bananas and Dominican Fried Chicken.

And so far, no mice, no water bugs. Plotnik had forgotten how much he hates those big, red, antenna-twitching, stove-hiding-behind, come-out-when-you-turn-off-the-light bastards.