Is Bar Pitti Basic? And If So, Does It Even Matter?
Our resident foodie and writer, Jayson Buford, weighs in.
By Jayson Buford
Photos by Marcus Maddox
Published
Jayson Eats is a monthly dining column that rates and recounts the food at New York's little-known spots.
What constitutes something as basic? When you walk from the West 4th A/B/D/F train stop, past the narrow streets to wider ones, over to Bar Pitti, an Italian restaurant with outdoor seating and a blackboard that tells you what the special are, you might be wondering what makes something simple, and whether this popular spot is that haunting word: basic.
These days, for me, what is posh and bombastic is where I am going. Food culture, because of the dearly departed Jonathan Gold and Anthony Bourdain, dived into hole in the wall taco spots, or fiercely cultural restaurants for the unheralded. And that has yielded mostly positive results, even if people now act like they care about those places without even understanding or knowing the people who birthed said unrecognized spots. Conceptualizing those places as food that should be considered mainstream and available for even the wealthy was a no brainer and genius; now, suddenly, you can’t read restaurant reviews in the New York Times without it coming to a neighborhood that Giulaini tried to obliterate with his policy. It changed America for the better. Now, people knew where Gloria’s in Crown Heights was because of Tony and his TV specials, and it gave shine to Michael K. Williams and his beautiful community that already know what it was before the white gaze. To see that is to see that slippery word: progress.