Ryan Skeen needs to step up his game.
Opening night at Il Cibreo, and the management has contracted a case
of stage fright. Wandering between tables and hovering with paranoiac
intensity, they watch diners dig into Skeen’s Italianite menu. For
Skeen, however, it’s a different story; curtain’s up and he’s ready to
rock, a veteran of restaurant openings at, among others, 5 & Diamond
and Fishtag. Known in “the industry” as a mercenary, a culinary gun for
hire, Skeen has consulted his way around Manhattan. Standing behind
Campo’s—excuse me, Il Cibreo’s—pass, Skeen barely breaks a sweat. Jeremy
Wladis, Il Cibreo’s owner, need not worry either: his prime location on
Broadway and reputation for vaguely European food will continue drawing
Italianophiles off the street. That peculiar species of
hipsterish, Columbia-bred WASP will still stop by for a tipple of house
red and a serviceable bowl of linguine. Goofy-eyed young couples will
always be found lingering in sidewalk seating, enjoying sewer fumes and
other delightful 114th Street scents.
In Morningside Heights, generic and trite mean wildly successful. In
fact, most of the neighborhood’s supposedly “better” restaurants—Vareli,
Community Food and Juice, and Mel’s Burger Bar—come to a certain trend
two years too late: scamacious wine bars, sustainalocaganic, and
“gourmet” burgers, respectively. By that logic, Il Cibreo will, in the
parlance of Columbia’s money-stuffed summer intern community, “make
bank.” Bruschetta? Check. Fancy pizza? Check. “Contorni”—cough, please
write “side dishes” if your menu does not consistently employ Italian?
Check. (I assume that Cortino is a spelling mistake, not a new, exotic
menu category.) “Contemporary Italian” is the natural successor to
“contemporary American,” which ended up signifying repetitive menus of
seasonal “American” ingredients prepared Euro-style. Of course,
“contemporary Italian” just implies a sterile and cartoonish portrait of
incredible regional diversity; it means “anything goes, as long as wild
mushrooms, Pecorino, burrata, ricotta, and cured meats are in
abundance”; it means ignore specificity in favor of generalism,
caricature in favor of verism, oversalting and overfatting in favor of
subtlety. Unfortunately, Skeen’s “extreme makeover” of Campo
merely entailed streamlining a previously amateurish menu, making it
more obviously “Italian,” and making it more obviously “downtown.” Il
Cibreo is sexier than campy Campo. Wladis is smart to evoke a Soho
aesthetic uptown at student-friendly prices. Skeen, however, needs to do
more than update the Campo concept: he needs to take the food in a more
ambitious and delicious direction. Continue reading →
