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Business & Tech

Sandwich Salvation at Zito's

The new Italian sandwich shop on Seventh Avenue lives up to the hype

I’m a little embarrassed to admit how eagerly I had been awaiting the opening of Zito’s, the new Italian sandwich shop on Seventh Avenue near Eighth Street. I’m certainly embarrassed to admit how many times I’ve eaten there in the week since it opened.

I’d already been to Zito’s once when, on the day before hurricane Irene was due to descend, some friends and I ducked out of the steady afternoon rain and into the shop’s subway-tiled interior. In an apparent effort to fortify our personal fat reserves in advance of the hurricane, we stuffed ourselves with a wide sampling from Zito’s “Classic 13” sandwich menu.

The Six-Point Braised Beef came first, with its tender meaty folds of beef layered beneath beer-sweetened mushrooms and onions, graced with a milky sheet of homemade mozzarella. The 8-Hour Slow Cooked Pork Braccioli was equally wonderful, hunks of pork from Faicco’s zipped with sharp funky Parmigiano Reggiano and bright tomato sauce. The Meatball Parm was as meaty and bally as you’d hope, with big fat orbs of beef, veal and pork from Otomanelli, gently spiced and savory, split onto a soft hero, sauced with that same tomato magic, and laid to rest beneath a soft blanket of mozzarella.

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The one disappointment of our feast was the Panelle, a rare-in-these-parts specialty of chickpea-flour fritters. The fritters themselves at Zito’s are lovely, thin sheets fried up crisp and lemony, but their sandwich consisted of nothing more than the fritters and bread—it had all the carb-on-carb nutritional monotony of a potato-chip sandwich. The additional of a little green (some fresh arugula or Zito’s fabulous garlicky broccoli rabe) and a little cheese would do it right.

As good as most of the sandwiches were, I think it’s the Sicilian-style rice balls called Arancini that will contribute the most to my personal obesity epidemic.

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In Zito’s rendition, a pear-shaped ball of saffron rice is stuffed with a mixture of ground meat (from Ottomanelli, of course) and peas and fried to order, yielding a light, crisp crust with the intoxicating fairground scent of the deep-fryer. The ball is then split in half, its densely moist risotto-like interior judiciously ornamented with just enough tomato sauce so you can still taste the saffron in the rice.

Zito’s is already doing a brisk business, and the line at the counter that can sometimes stretch nearly out the door often moves slowly due to the shop's homey but inefficient service model. You wait in line to order and pay at the counter, then sit down and wait for someone to bring your food.

Unfortunately, the same person working the register and taking orders is also the one delivering the food. When you finally do reach the end of the line, your interaction with the cashier might be further delayed by a delivery—or by the phone ringing, as the same person is apparently responsible for that too.

The sweet folks running the place don't have the sort of psychotic gruffness that makes this kind of system seem natural in the classic old establishments. I hope they’ll be able to add to their staff before the crowds begin to wear on their nerves. 

 

Zito's is located at 300 Seventh Ave. Phone: (718)-499-2800

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