Hearing Frank Prizinzano describe his calf brains is like listening to a man who just won the lottery. "Oh, they were just gorgeous. People started seeing other tables eat them, and then they would order them, and before you knew it we sold out before 7:30," he said. "We countered the gaminess with smokiness by searing them—that and capers, some sage with fresh kale on the side," Prizinzano makes a sweeping gesture with his hands. "Incredible." All this is to say that the man takes his cooking very seriously, which is why his delightfully inexpensive, superbly delicious new restaurant Sauce is one of our favorite places to eat.
Grass fed meatball hoagie that we shamefully forgot to order with cheese (Gothamist)
Everything at Sauce is handmade, and the meat, Prizinzano will remind you, is all locally sourced, humanely slaughtered, and cut from the whole animal in-house by Sauce's butcher Adam Tiberio. The beef is also grass fed. "It's almost offensive how different it tastes if you're used to normal beef," the chef says. "But then you start craving it, and you won't eat anything else." A sandwich made with grass fed meatballs in a tomato gravy on a brioche bun with a side of greens tossed in olive oil and salt is $6.95.
"We use every part of the animal—all of the bones, scraps for stock, everything. We even make soap from the fat," Prizinzano says, explaining how he keeps costs down. "Also, the portions are smaller. We want people to try everything." Will costs start going up once it's impossible to get a table? "Maybe by a dollar or so," he concedes. Prinzano's partner, Rob DeFlorio, one of the men behind Mother, says "If we're doing our job you won't even notice."
This is good news, because at Sauce you can cover a lot of ground for a little scratch. When we're ravenous at lunch, a porchetta sandwich on a Caputo baguette and a plate of ricotta cavatelli does the trick. For dinner, the chef pitched us a special: Mezzanelli Amatriciana Tracchiolle. A special pork sparerib belly chop is cured for a few days, slow cooked for 18 hours, then charred in a pan. "Mezzanelli is basically like giant buccatini—and that's in a thick tomato gravy. Scissored mint goes on top, along with some percorino toscano. It comes on a big-ass plate," Prizinzano brings it over. Indeed it is huge, more than enough for two people. "That's $24.95."
Sauce doesn't yet have a website, or a full bar (they're hoping to get the license by the end of this month), and outdoor seating will be unveiled in time for spring. But the chef and owner behind an Italian empire in the East Village is forming a locally-sourced meat co-op in Albany, scoping out a LIC warehouse to store his whole animals, and dreams of Sauce, becoming a "commissary" for other kitchenless locations in New York. His glass-paned butcher's room is also a demo kitchen. "The idea is that everything on our menu will have a link to a video, showing you how we make it," he says.
"We want people to make this food part of their staple diet, that's why everything is fresh and it's not too expensive," he says. "I grew up eating this food, my children grew up eating this food, and I'm healthy." We're not sure what the Surgeon General would think of eating Sauce's beef shank tortelloni three times a week ("it knocked me out of my fucking chair," Prizinzano says). But when you're it washing down with a glass of primitivo, who cares?
78 Rivington Street // (212) 420-7700 // Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner // CASH ONLY
