Despite his fictional-sounding life, the famous Italian seducer Giacomo Casanova was a real person who lived in 18th-century Venice. Now he’s come to New Haven, near the apex of Park Street, in the form of new Italian restaurant Casanova, where his epicurean lifestyle inspires the menu and his visage graces the facade, the interior and even the bill.
As with some of the original’s conquests, this new Casanova’s seduction of me began slowly. I was sitting at the bar, which is a pizza bar, not a liquor one. (There is, of sorts, a liquor bar, but it stands to the side and offers no seating.) Before me was a man I would come to know as Gennaro, a mostly Italian-speaking pizzaiolo who approached his craft like a true amante. Past him, in the oven, was a wood-fueled fire that looked inviting even on a hot summer evening. But the geometry of it all meant my servers had to speak to me from sideways or behind, so there wasn’t quite that immediate camaraderie that can spring up across a bar top. Thankfully, those servers, including general manager Giuseppe Passeggio, were warm and genuine enough to overcome the layout.
The first thing I ordered from them, off a cocktail list pinging some of Italy’s other historical heavyweights, was the Basilica di Bernini ($14), a sweet-at-first spritz with Italicus (a bergamot liqueur), prosecco, grapefruit, soda and basil blossom. Easy to drink, it was also a little complex with some sake funk and a minty finish, and it only got better as the grapefruit asserted itself farther down the glass.
I added to that a pizza: the Parmigiana ($21), hold the Parmesan. Cooked in a contemporary Neapolitan style, the dough was airy and chewy but also nicely charred. Bites of savory, unctuous, floral fried eggplant with creamy flesh and chewy-crispy skin crowded across the sweet and rich pomodoro like kids at a water park the weekend after school’s out. I started feeling full before the pie was half-gone, but it was so delicious that I finished it all anyway.
Finally, I ordered the Machiavello ($16), a boldly brown and murky mix of Amaro Averna, espresso reduction and rye whiskey infused with fig and charred rosemary. The coffee blast of the reduction hit me first, followed by the booziness of the rye and its darkly sweet and herbal infusions. Later, as the melt of the ice softened the drink’s edges, the flavors shifted toward something like dark chocolate drizzled with caramel and balsamic.
Machiavellian or not, such overtures were, like Casanova himself, hard to resist.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
