Best of New York 2007 • Eating

• Da Enzo

  494 Ninth Ave.; 212-947-7000

  You can find the best gelato in town at Da Enzo, the new Italian restaurant ensconced in the back of Manganaro’s Heroboy. How do we know it’s the best? Because Da Enzo’s Enzo Cammarata (who used to run the restaurants Siracusa and, later, Bussola with his brother Gino) told us so. Not only that, but according to Cammarata, Jon Snyder of Il Laboratorio del Gelato, considered by many to the best gelato man around, concurred. “He told me to my face,” says Enzo. Also, Pino Luongo: “He says, ‘This is the best I ever had,’ ” says Enzo—to his face, presumably. “And you know, he’s from Tuscany, and the Tuscans never say anything like that.” What makes it so good? Other than copping to a little honey and cinnamon in the superb ricotta flavor, Cammarata isn’t saying. Of course he isn’t. But his father, Giuseppe, learned the recipe in 1932 as a young boy working in a Sicilian café, and then Gino adapted it for the American market in 1981. Ten years ago, Gino passed the family heirloom on to Enzo, but not without some hesitation. (“He didn’t even want to teach me, the son of a gun,” says Enzo.) Blood may be thicker than water, but now, since Gino’s between gigs, Enzo’s gelato is thickest (and smoothest, and creamiest) of all.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine