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A Pizzeria Where You Can Skip the Pizza

It takes salesmanship and flair to sell the idea of lard on a pizza. But these are precisely the qualities that define Otto, an inspired collaboration of four partners, Mario Batali, Joseph Bastianich, Mark Ladner and Jason Denton. The first two are well known to New York diners as the creators of Esca, Babbo, and Lupa. At Otto, their largest restaurant to date, they took on two extra hands, Mr. Ladner, Lupa's chef, and Mr. Denton, a partner in Lupa. The new venture has its front door on Eighth Street, hence Otto, Italian for "eight." That's OH-toe, please, not Ah-toe.

The restaurant is advertised as an enoteca and pizzeria, which is more and less than the truth. There is a serious all-Italian list, which includes a mouth-filling, very fruity white wine from Mr. Bastianich's vineyard in Friuli. There are also a lot of pizzas, some traditional, others unique to Otto, and all cooked on top of the griddle rather than in an oven. But Otto may be the only pizzeria in New York where it's possible to skip the pizza entirely.

The menu is devised, ingeiously, to stave off boredom, with separate categories devoted to antipasti, bruschettas, pizzas, fried appetizers, cheeses and desserts. To add interest, one item in most categories changes daily, so there's a new bruschetta, fried appetizer, traditional pizza, and new-wave pizza each day. Initially, it's a little bewildering, but the well-trained waiters start each meal by explaining the Otto system.

My advice is not to overcommit to the pizza. Some are terrific, notably the pizza topped with lardo, or cured salt pork. Like the pizza bianca, which is flat bread brushed with oil and sprinkled with sea salt, the lardo harks back to what might be called the pre-Columbian or Roman pizza, which did not have any tomato. The lardo version is simply covered with paper-thin strips of glistening, transluscent, heavenly pork fat (which has less cholesterol than butter and fewer calories than olive oil) and scattered with bits of pungent rosemary. The crust, which was chewy bordering on tough in the early days, improved greatly with time, becoming lighter and flakier.

Otto has average pizzas, good pizzas, excellent pizzas and odd pizzas, like the one topped with ricotta, sliced potato and marinated anchovies. Not everyone will appreciate getting clams in the shell on the vongole pizza, but the combination of clams, chili, and garlic makes for a zesty pie. The classic margherita, the famous tricolor combination of tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella and basil leaves, makes a feeble impression. It's dull. It cannot compare to the Thursday special pizza, topped with tomato sauce, roasted golden tomatoes, two cheeses and nuggets of cured pork jowl, or the frizzy-looking pizza topped with tomato, raw fennel and shaved bottarga, or pressed mullet roe.

After many meals at Otto, however, I found true happiness by grazing the margins of the menu. The appetizers, many served in mustard-colored ceramic ramekins, can make a full meal. Cauliflower florets tossed in garlic, lemon and bits of olive have the winning simplicity that defines Italian food at its best, as does a generous serving of eggplant caponata, its almost dangerous sweetness cut by slivers of sharp, pungent calamata olives. Mushrooms, on the other hand, are so fiercely marinated that they become slippery bits adrift in an acidic sea.

The fritto category is rewarding. Small triangles of fried chickpea, served with a squeeze of lemon, are delicately breaded and sweetly creamy inside. Whitebait, fried to the crackling point, are tossed with fried sage and marjoram. They are perfection. The fist list offers a half dozen choices, but I kept returning to the marinated anchovies, served with sliced scallions and rough croutons soaked in good olive oil. The lardo can be ordered on its own. Like the rest of the meats, except for the prosciutto di Parma, it's made on the premises.

Otto's menu categories take on a life and a personality of their own. Rather than abstractions, they become friendly territory to explore. There's something about the presentation, and the pleasing logic of the thing, that makes you want to work methodically through each and every dish in each category. Admirably, this clean, elegant concept carries right through to the dessert stage, when diners face two choices, cheese or gelato. Otto puts a spin on its small cheese list by pairing each cheese with fruit, in an unusual form, like the little sour cherries in syrup that accompany a slab of soft gorgonzola dolce, or the sweetly vinegary saba, or grape must, that makes a dipping pool for large chunks of Parmesan cheese.

The dessert plan is simple. It's gelato, served in a steel coupe and eaten with a spade-shaped spoon. The quality is very high, so unadorned flavors like hazelnut, chocolate or caramel can shimmer in their own light. Like the pizzas, though, the gelati come plain and fancy, and a couple of the fancier ones are stunners, like an appealingly sour ricotta gelato with crunchy glazed walnuts and dried figs reconstituted in red wine and sugar syrup, and the brilliantly improbable olive-oil gelato sprinkled with grains of sea salt.

Otto is a pleasure in almost every way. Mr. Batali and his partners somehow know exactly when an idea becomes a gimmick, and they stop just short of the line. Vintage Italian deli slicers and scales, in Ferrari red, add a bright touch to the front room, with its wine bar and stand-up tables with marble countertops.

Even the check-in procedure has a bit of drama to it. Diners announce themselves, and if there's no table, they are issued a train ticket with a destination on it. The idea is to have a glass of wine at one of the marble tables and check a large blackboard. When Firenze or Lucca or Napoli shows up on the board, the table's ready. It's a little silly, but ingenious and irresistible. Just like Otto.