When you think of old-style Italian-American restaurants does red sauce spring to mind? Red check wax table cloths, family-style servings, a free salad with your entree, rotund red-faced guys with their sleeves rolled-up, going “ey!” and slapping each other on the back? Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s also close to the truth in a lot of places, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I, for one, love a classic east coast red sauce and meatballs joint, but it’s not the complete picture.

Ferdinando’s Focacceria on Union Street in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood has been in business as long as any in New York City. In 1910, in the heart of what was then a burgeoning Italian community, it opened its doors principally to cater for expatriate paesani working at the nearby Brooklyn docks, and it’s been serving the neighborhood faithfully ever since. However, unlike many of the other Italian eateries in the area, Fernandino’s does not serve everything with lashings of tomato gravy (not that they don’t offer red sauce – try it with their tripe), instead, they serve their original regional Sicilian dishes as if they don’t care or aren’t aware that long-established Italian restaurants are supposed to top everything with a meatball. They are most famous for their panelle and vastedda (chick pea fritters and veal spleen sandwiches, respectively), which they didn’t just decide to start selling since David Chang and Michael Symon announced it was cool for Brooklyn hipsters to eat offal.

That Ferdinando’s and many other original Italian businesses are still in operation in Carroll Gardens speaks to the fact that descendants of the neighborhood’s original communities remain where their forefathers first landed, in sight of Ellis Island across New York harbor. Not that simply by merit they don’t deserve to be in business, but that health-ninnies and changing dietary proclivities have discouraged most people from looking kindly upon rolls filled with deep fried chickpea dough or boiled calf-innards.

Our recent visit was the culmination of several years of anticipation and a pleasant relief after a terrible, screamy morning with our 5-month old. It was planned as our first lunch out with the baby, and we arrived flustered and desperate that he would nap long enough to allow us to get through a meal in peace. Finding ourselves a table at the rear, as distant as possible from the other patrons, we settled ourselves in and admired the time-worn decor of sepia-tint photos of the old country, a thickly over-painted tin ceiling and some attractive stained glass. The baby sparked awake shortly after we’d ordered our wine, but to our amazement, he emerged from his car-seat cheerful, quiet and relaxed. Maybe he is as susceptible as we are to a relaxing restaurant atmosphere? Whatever the reason, cue a great lunch.

Owner Francesco Buffa’s food is unrepentantly rustic and from the mismatched plates to the friendly but slightly gruff service, it is a truly authentic experience of old Brooklyn that is increasingly hard to find. Starting with a cold octopus and celery salad and a plate of garlicky broccoli di rape with a basket of crisp Italian bread from Mazzola bakery two blocks up, before proceeding with a panelle and mozzarella sandwich and a vastedda special (with the most unctuous ricotta), our happiness reigned for nearly two hours. In fact, so becalmed were we and Paolo, that we had dessert and espresso as the wait staff cooed around the baby.

Buddhists say that expectations are the root of all suffering, but even if we’d had the greatest morning of our lives instead of one of the most grueling, Ferdinando’s would still have been special. We will be heading back again soon to try their famous pasta con le sarde (with sardines, raisins and pine nuts) and rice balls stuffed with house-made ragu and peas. Whether Paolo will cooperate remains to be seen, but the food is so good that it’s worth the risk.

Emerging from the cool interior, the scent of carved stone and beeswax mingles briefly before being overwhelmed by the perfume of orange trees, and the holy silence is punctured by the mossy gurgle of a tiny fountain. Large white geese peck assertively at the ragged hands of ferns that decorate this cloister and I am reminded that oranges were brought here by the Moors and that geese make more effective security systems than dogs and fences. Incongruous? Perhaps. But not nearly so peculiar given the context in which I was reminded of this memory of Barcelona: an article announcing that Jennifer Aniston’s favorite country is Spain and Barcelona her favorite city. All of which would be of no interest whatsoever if she made better movies.

I arrived at this location having played that day of nearly six years ago backward in my mind until I arrived at the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia, a short walk from where we were staying in the El Born district. Playing it forward I recalled eating a surprisingly good chorizo and canned tuna sandwich with a beer to calm my vertigo after scaling one of the narrow spires of La Sagrada Familia. Venturing onto consecrated ground typically has a tranquilizing effect – especially twice in one day – as if merely stepping over the good Lord’s threshold is enough to encourage contemplation and peace even in a cynic like me, but the views over the city were worth the trauma.

This “surf and turf” sandwich, a somewhat curious mix for us this side of the Atlantic, was the inspiration for the meal pictured at top. Catalan culinary tradition pairs mar y muntanya often in the chicken and shrimp stews of the region of Girona, and baby octopus with fried eggs loosely follows the same line of thinking, just focusing unapologetically on the infantile and gestational end of the spectrum of life.

Crunchy, with the toothsomeness one finds in octopi, dipped into runny yolks and eaten with crusty bread, this is as incongruous a dish as one may find. Texturally and flavor-wise it was a success, if not exactly a symphony. Eaten off Hefty(R) Basics(TM) Tableware biodegradable paper plates – another departure from convention – fitting given the inherent greasiness of the two components, it felt rather like a the kind of thing one might enjoy at a casual beachfront tasca, along with pink Cava and sunburn. Happily, the plates withstood the grease and sharp knives admirably, a stern challenge indeed.

The first time I ate pulpo a la gallega was at a very disreputable-looking food stand not far from the Estadio Balaídos in Vigo, Spain, before watching a soccer match between Celta de Vigo and Racing Santander (it finished 2-2). It was served on a slightly wilted plastic plate with a toothpick that looked suspiciously blunt at one end, as if it had already been used. I was absolutely sure I was going to have raging diarrhea because of this lack of hygiene, but ate the whole plate anyway. Sure enough, two hours after the end of the match, I rushed back to the hotel holding on to my bowels for dear life.

The second time, things improved considerably, reclining, as we were, in some old oak chairs in a tapas bar in Madrid earlier this year after a morning in El Museo del Prado. The only unpleasant feeling came from our sadness when the generous racione was finished. While pondering these feelings, Amy and I came to the conclusion that it’s one of the world’s greatest snack foods. Chewy, salty, sweet and filling, healthy and satisfying, pulpo a la gallega is simply chopped boiled octopus in the Galician style – dressed with sea salt, olive oil and sweet pimenton – and in Galician pulperias is commonly served on a wooden board with toothpicks. Like so many tapas, and Spanish dishes generally, it is achingly simple, and yet unbelievably good. Add anything to it and it becomes something else, take something away and it’s missing a key element.

That said, this, the signature dish of the region, is sometimes made with potatoes and when it is, is normally cooked on a hot plate and referred to as pulpo a la plancha. Another variation, pulpo a la feria, or pulpo a la feira in Gallego (the local dialect that sits somewhere between Spanish and Portuguese) is traditionally cooked in a copper kettle which gives the purple (when cooked) octopus a more orangey color and interesting minerally-taste. When such traditional vessels are unavailable (like virtually everywhere), a copper coin is often tossed in to the boiling water.

In an effort to do it all in one dish, as we only had one octopus – we boiled the ‘pus with a copper coin and boiled some potatoes separately, then combined them on the plate with the salt, pimenton and olive oil. It was delicious. The texture of octopus might be off-putting for some, as it’s kind of chewy on the outside and “crunchy” on the inside, but I love it, and when cut into inch-long chunks it makes a fantastic finger-food, if your guests are adventurous enough to try it. Not only that, but it’s easy to prepare and octopus is pretty reasonably priced.

Pulpo a la Gallega

Ingredients

1 pre-frozen medium octopus – around 1lb, pre-cooked (if not pre-frozen, freeze it for 24 hours)

2 quarts/ (roughly) 2 liters water, boiling

1 bay leaf, 1/2 onion, 1/4 cup vinegar (optional)

2 medium waxy potatoes, peeled and balled (using a melon-baller)

2-3oz extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp pimenton dulce/sweet paprika

1/2 tsp coarse sea salt

Recipe

Gently boil octopus in 2 quarts/2 liters salted water, remembering to add a copper penny, for 1 hr. (Some recipes call for bay leaf, onion, and vinegar, some not, in the water. Our experience tells us adding a 1/4 cup of white vinegar helps to tenderize the ‘pus a little)

Allow to cool before slicing into 1inch/2cm chunks.

Dress with olive oil, and sprinkle generously with pimenton and salt.

Serve with lots of crusty bread and a bottle of something cool and white, perhaps a Galician Albarino, Ribeiro, or a Portugese vinho verde.

Note: our friend CanaryGirl has also made Pulpo a la Gallega and her technique for boiling the octopus is rather different from ours. Check her out and feel free to tell us which you think worked best.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• Truffled Butter: A Prince Among Ideas
• Pernil (Roasted Pork Shoulder): Low and Slow
• Grilled Rainbow Trout with a Romesco-esque Sauce
• Jamaican Jerk Chicken