For us, no visit to New York would be complete without at least one meal, and preferably two or three, at Via Carota. This temple of rustic comfort food in the West Village doesn’t take reservations so we find ourselves eating at very unfashionable times. We tried to have dinner here on a recent Saturday night, but it was Saturday, a lovely afternoon, and folks were out, so no luck even right at 5:00 when the menu changes from lunch to dinner. Instead we opted for lunch another day and being early (before 11:30), we easily got a table.
Some menu items are de rigeur; that means we began with grilled artichokes (exceptionally sweet and lovely this season) accompanied by a newer treat, ramps and prosciutto over a square of grilled polenta (perfect!), and followed by an all-time great, roasted chicken with lemon and herbs.
These dishes beg lots of chewy bread and a crisp Italian white. It’s a somewhat indulgent lunch with most everything bathed in olive oil, but life is short!
For another take on this marvelous eatery, here’s an exuberant essay from the New York Times’ Magazine about their towering green salad, which we’ve also enjoyed a time or two.
RECENT READING: MAIN LINE CLASS
The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune, and the Story of My Father by Janny Scott
If you lived in the Philadelphia suburbs in the 1980’s and 90’s as I did, you’d be hard pressed not to have read about Robert Montgomery Scott and the family’s palatial estate, Ardrossan, on the Main Line. The house was storied and Scott descended from a family legacy of wealth and distinction marked by both achievement and failure.
For fourteen years, Scott was president and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art which put him regularly on the society pages. And his mother, Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, was considered by many to have been the model for Katharine Hepburn’s character in the film, “The Philadelphia Story.” Janny Scott’s memoir is a depiction of a monied American upper class in its heyday with multiple properties, horses, a multitude of servants, exotic travels, and an affinity for British manners and mannerisms. Their grand mansions are almost as important characters as the individuals.
Beneath the polished surface, however, this is a generational saga riddled with alcoholism, suicide, and affairs. Janny’s father was an alcoholic, but the extent to which this dominated his entire life, was something she only fully realized when she read his secret diaries. He bequeathed these journals to her, but they were stowed away and their location undiscovered until some years after his death.
Ms. Scott researched the family’s history, interviewed numerous relatives, and has written their collective story with tenderness and a clear eye. She doesn’t sugarcoat reality, but she also states when she doesn’t know or what she didn’t appreciate at a particular time. I found it all fascinating and very much appreciated the family tree at the front; with names repeated in successive generations this aid helped me keep straight which Edgar or which Hope was meant. (~JWFarrington)
Notes: Robert Scott photo from nytimes.com; other photos by JWFarrington.
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