Best Late Night Menu: Scarpetta

Mozzarella sticks at an all-night diner or a ramen raid at your corner store simply doesn’t cut the mustard for after-hours eats anymore. Given the ever-increasing popularity of the fourth meal, a bevy of haute boîtes has started cooking up late-night menus. After surveying the scene we settled on the Italian meatpacker Scarpetta. Inspired by his days at the short-lived Bar Tonno, chef Scott Conant  is serving up tonno-style small plates like a squid-ink shot, and mackerel with pickled cucumber and salmon roe. The menu will also include half portions of some of Scarpetta’s signatures like farfalle with sweetbreads, kale and pancetta and polenta with fricassee of truffled mushrooms, as well as newy but goody balsamic-glazed pork spare ribs with tomato chutney. Every week wine director Jeff Tascarella will introduce ten cult wines and add to them yogurt semifrudo with salted fruit—a recipe for the sweetest of reveries. For Conant, “this is a really great way to offer guests food that is approachable yet signature to Scarpetta: honest, simple, and soulful.”    

—Genevieve Bahrenburg