A VOCE

A Voce, 41 Madison Avenue (bn 25th & 26th Streets), Manhattan, 212 545-8555

I haven't spent much time dining in this neck of the woods and initially couldn't find A Voce. There's no sexy logo or flashy sign and especially on a night late in winter (I went in March) the dark front of the restaurant does little to proclaim it's whereabouts. What A Voce lacks in prominence outside is more than made up with the food served inside.

The decor, wood-floors, greens, leather topped tables, padded chairs and wood-sculptures made me feel as though I had time-traveled into an avant-garde Japanese bar-restaurant in the 1970's. It was at once cozy and comfortable but occasionally jarring in its dissonance from the hearthy warmth of the food that followed.

Sitting in the back of the restaurant we had an angle to see into the new, sparkling kitchen once in a while when the doors opened where we spotted chefs in their whites preparing the food. We started with two appetizers, the grilled octopus peperonata, lemon, chorizo ($17) which was practically tasty but faint in comparison with the duck meatball antipasto dried cherry mostarda ($13). If "A Voce," means word of mouth, this appetizer has gotten it's fair share of it. Moist and deliciously tasty, they're where meatballs have always aspired to be, out of a jumbled mess of clumpy spaghetti and on center-stage in a sauce worthy of bread-mopping. It's the kind of dish you order and the waiter comes back and apologizes for how bad the food is because she sees the dish is spotless.

Speaking of the waiter, he was friendly and did his best to persuade us to subsitute my all-meat entree plan with some fish or chicken. It was no use, and on came the lamb shank tortellini with escarole, lemon, piave cheese ($21), the braised veal soffritto with creamy polenta, grenolata, and orange ($26) and the country-style Tuscan tripe borlotti, tomato, grilled ciabatta ($19). The trip and the veal soffrito both stood on their own but the tender veal soffrito was the delight of the three.

There was a price to pay though for our ordering, one of the entrees would have to act as a meat-dessert, we were just too full to press forward and would have to mean another visit. The funny thing about "A Voce," is just that, the word of mouth itself. The food is so tasty and yet there's quite a bit of hating on it out here in the ether, not critics so much as forum posts responding to positive review and I'm not quite sure why they're not celebrating is more. Not that Chef Carmellini needs me to defend him, his food speaks for itself, and I haven't been to the Batali representatives of Italian haute-cuisine yet so I can't speak to them but as someone with Italian heritage studying food who is interested in playing with the cuisine on a level higher than the American standards it set a bar for something to aspire to.

TOTAL SPENT: $144 including two glasses of wine ($118.13 without tip)

20 WORDS OR LESS: Don't be confused by the decor just order the duck meatballs and get ready to smile.