Scott Conant

What better way to spend a beautiful early-autumn weekend than indoors, fantasizing about being in another part of the world entirely? The annual Travel + Leisure Global Bazaar returns to the Lexington Armory Friday through Sunday, and participating vendors include Patrón Tequila (which is apparently setting up a “Great Wall of Patrón” from which you may select your preferred strong cocktail), Oaxacal Mezcal and Mount Gay Rum. (Boozy!) Food will also be served—with participating chefs like Scarpetta’s Scott Conant and Marea’s Michael White. There are even food trucks with a variety of global cuisines parked in front of the Armory, for those who dream of traveling to Austin!

The Lexington Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue, Friday through Sunday, tickets available through Ticketmaster, information can be found at travelandleisure.com/promo/globalbazaar.

He was caroming from one bold proclamation to the next: If his surname were Italian, the city's food establishment would have rallied around him sooner! He spent twice the time in Italy that Mario Batali did, and never takes the liberties with Italian cuisine that Andrew Carmellini does at Locanda Verde! Neither of them has quite his combination of knowledge, authenticity and commitment!

"I eat, sleep, live and die Italian food," said Mr. White.

This could sound like a prelude to BEEF. But Batali, when Bruni contacts him, makes like it's no big deal:

Mr. Batali, in an e-mail that mixed full words with abbreviations, wrote, "He definitely spent more time in Italy than I did, he married a real Italian and probably makes love like an Italian too, defo better than me."

Aw. But... ew.

On Friday, May 1, the 48-year-old operator of acclaimed midtown eateries Alto and Convivio will debut his latest effort, Marea, an Italian-style seafood spot in the former San Domenico space at 240 Central Park South, with a splashy party benefiting the charity Citymeals on Wheels.

The new restaurant, outfitted from floor to ceiling with materials imported from Italy, is Mr. Cannon’s third venture with replacement chef Michael White, who’s turned out to be a more-than-capable backup. (Last October, New York Times critic Frank Bruni awarded Mr. White three stars at Convivio—a full one-star improvement over the Tudor City Place restaurant’s prior incarnation, L’Impero.)

The confident Mr. Cannon fully expects more of the same at Marea, considering how well things have been going so far with Mr. White.

“We came from similar experiences,” Mr. Cannon told the Daily Transom. “He had a situation with his partner, Steve Hanson, and couldn’t work with him. And I had I situation with my partner and I couldn’t work with him. And we kind of fell into each other.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Cannon couldn’t say enough good things about his current partner: “He’s a great guy. He’s classically trained. He’s incredibly creative and incredibly passionate. His motivations to do what he does are solely like my motivations in that we love food, we love eating. Like, when we go to Italy together, it’s like two 4-year-olds in a toy store. We’re just having fun the whole time. And, yeah, my wife hates us. I think both of our wives hate us because it’s like, ‘You call this a job!’”

Meanwhile, that pesky matter with the former chef, Mr. Conant, is finally over. The two culinary heavyweights settled their long-standing legal battle on March 13, according to court papers.

The pair had parted ways amicably enough in March 2007. “The whole thing with Scott, when we separated, was totally civil and good and done very well and quietly. No one knew it was happening,” Mr. Cannon said.

But things soon unraveled. In a 2008 interview with the trade publication New York Restaurant Insider, Mr. Conant was quoted associating his former business partner with “the Peter Principle, where people rise to their level of incompetence.” (Full disclosure: The Observer’s August 2008 profile of Mr. Conant was also later submitted into evidence.)

As a result, Mr. Cannon stopped sending deferred-compensation checks to his ex-chef, with his lawyer arguing that such “disparaging and defamatory remarks” violated a non-disparagement clause included in the estranged duo’s legal separation agreement.

Mr. Conant then sued, claiming that Mr. Cannon had violated the agreement himself, by criticizing his former chef’s cooking style in an interview with Alto Cucina Inc. as “too refined. With dishes like his hamachi with ginger oil he strayed too far.”

This past December, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge O. Peter Sherwood ruled that “neither [of them] met their respective burdens,” according to court papers.

In some ways, Mr. Cannon blamed himself for how things turned out.

“Part of the reason I’m in the position I’m in right now with my ex-chef is that I never really sought press,” he told the Daily Transom. “I never really got any notoriety or any reputation or anything. For me, it was always about the restaurant doing well and that was it. And, you know, the nature of the business in the last 25 years has been very chef-driven. … A lot of the reason we split up was because, basically, leverage. In any relationship, there’s leverage, either with your wife or whomever. In this situation, it was with a chef, and the chef felt that, because I was getting no notoriety, that he could do whatever he wanted. So things happened that led to the whole thing falling apart.”

Mr. Conant, now the owner of two Scarpetta restaurants in Manhattan and Miami, told the Daily Transom: “I’m sorry to hear that’s his perspective on the relationship. It’s been two and a half years. At the end of the day, I have real affection for Chris. I’m proud of what he’s doing, not only for him and his family, but for Italian food in general.”

During the eight-plate, 16-glass meal prepared by Michelin-starred chef Michael White and sommelier Eric Zillier, featuring Bering Sea king crab, sautéed veal sweetbreads, and hand-rolled maccheroni with braised duck, Mr. Cannon was raving about a delicious dinner of "horse cheeks" that he enjoyed during a recent trip to the Piedmont region of Italy.

The equestrian facial meat, also known as guanciale di cavallo, is considered a delicacy across the pond, but locally, a sure-fire PETA magnet.

"I dare you to put it on the menu," joked Wine Spectator features editor Owen Dugan.

From Hellfire to Hearty Trattoria

dining out withA breeze has run through what was once Hellfire in the meatpacking district. Vento, which means "wind" in Italian, is a casual trattoria that takes up three floors and an outdoor terrace of a red-brick 19th-century building shaped like the prow of a ship. The basement, once a stable, was one of the most notorious S&M clubs back in the 70's and 80's. Now it's a lounge called Level V, with exotic cocktails, a D.J. and a clientele dressed in miniskirts and flip-flops instead of dog collars and chains.

The restaurant is on the edge of a cobblestone square at the intersection of Ninth Avenue and 14th Street, an area that looked like a gritty backwater quartier of Paris when Pastis moved in several years ago. Now, the workmen in white jackets who lugged racks of beef from the meat warehouses have been all but replaced by trendy late-night restaurants, bars and boutiques. Down from Vento, there's a busy new hotel, the Gansevoort, with its blue neon-lit lobby, as well as Spice Market and the private members' club Soho House. Across the street is the Woofspa and Resort, where you can look through the window and observe the customers-dogs of all shapes and sizes-lolling about on white carpets.

Vento is owned by Stephen Hanson, whose empire of over a dozen restaurants (two in Times Square) includes Ruby Foo's, Blue Water Grill, Blue Fin and Dos Caminos. His most serious establishment to date is Fiamma, which opened in Soho two years ago serving first-rate Italian food.

While Fiamma sets out to be haute couture , Vento is Mr. Hanson's off-the-peg budget line. There are two extremely talented chefs at the helm: Michael White from Fiamma, with Martin Burge (lately of Tribeca's Fresh) as chef de cuisine. Their aim is to provide the sort of simple, rustic food you would find in a homely trattoria in Italy. But this doesn't stop Vento from feeling like a moneymaking machine, packing in as many people as it can hold.

The crowd jostling through the front door, which is manned by staff wearing earpieces and mumbling into their chests, was so large one evening that when the friend I was meeting eventually picked me out of the line, he asked facetiously, "Is this give-away night?"

Some of the customers-like the ones sporting tattoos worthy of a jailbird-would've fit in nicely at the Hellfire Club. One young woman wore an orange micro-mini with a long white rope dangling down the side, white thigh boots and a black leather jacket-even though the temperature outside was 85 degrees.

As we entered, the young hostess muttering into her microphone took us up a flight of wooden stairs to the second-floor dining room. Resembling a cafeteria, the brick-walled room was set up with rows of small wooden tables and brown chairs with plastic-covered seats. Small, cube-shaped light boxes line the ceiling, and the length of the room is punctuated by the original carved cast-iron columns, the most interesting architectural detail in the place. On the tables were black woven plastic mats, red glass bowls of white chrysanthemums and votive candles wrapped in scrolls of paper-but despite all this, the décor yells budget. "It's not bad," said my companion. "If this were an airport restaurant, you'd be pleasantly surprised."

"Your server will bring you the menus," said our hostess as she sat us down.

Why "server"? Why not "waiter" or "waitress"? Why this American urge to make everything non-gender-specific? The busboy-sorry, bus-server-filled our wineglasses with water, and the wait-server, unaware of the mistake, was prevented in the nick of time from pouring the wine into them, too. (The wine list, by the way, is entirely Italian.)

Vento's cocktails are huge and delicious, and they include concoctions such as the Vento Vortex, made with raspberry vodka, crème de griotte and lime, or the Paradiso (rum, amaretto and white peach foam). I didn't try the Casanova (vanilla vodka, green walnut amaro, espresso, cream and, of all things, Nutella). Instead, since it was a hot night, I ordered a Tom Collins.

The menu doesn't deviate from standard Italian fare, which would be fine were the food at least consistent. Alas, simple Italian cooking-which depends so much on the ingredients-has nothing to hide behind when it goes wrong; eating at Vento is like a game of roulette. The food, from a stressed and overextended kitchen, is hit-or-miss. Order the tortelli, squares of pasta filled with ricotta, and they arrive literally glued to the plate, topped with a sprinkling of favas and tasteless morels. (They seemed to have spent as much time under the heat lamp as the dogs in the spa across the street do on their carpets.) But what a difference between that dish and the casarecci! The latter are rolled short pasta, and these were perfectly cooked al dente and tossed in a rich cream sauce laced with strips of prosciutto, peas and truffle oil. I was amazed to get pasta this good in a restaurant that serves 300 people a sitting.

Grilled prawns, cooked with their heads on and seasoned with orange, rosemary and garlic, were also exceptional. No complaints about the octopus, either-smoky, charred chunks tossed in a red wine sauce with roasted red peppers, grilled onions and olives. The dandelion salad, made with long, bitter leaves and tossed in a creamy vinaigrette with anchovies, grated Parmesan and garlic, was wonderful.

Big-eye tuna crudo was "little-eye" on the plate-four wimpy squares sprinkled with lime, peperoncino and sea salt. Four tiny but delicious mouthfuls.

After that, a ribeye arrived that looked gigantic. The steak was cooked properly but the meat was undistinguished, and it came with roast potatoes-served in a cast-iron dish-that were so salty they were inedible. Tuscan kale was also inedible, awash in vinegar. The cod was overcooked and garnished with a sweet-and-sour muddle of artichoke caponata, salsa verde and toasted almonds.

But the roast chicken was a different story: juicy, with a crisp skin sprinkled with herbs-the sort of dish you'd hope for in a country trattoria, served with escarole, pancetta and a smooth, light polenta.

Fiamma's pastry chef, Elizabeth Katz, has wisely kept her choice of desserts to a minimum. Avoid the gummy, soapy chocolate torte served with a sorbet that tastes like boiled candy. Go instead for the wonderful lemon tart topped with berries and set off with a crunch of pistachio, or the chocolate semifreddo with milk chocolate fudge and salted hazelnuts.

On a warm night, the best place to sit at Vento is outside. Have a couple of the enormous, brightly colored cocktails, share one of the thin-crusted wood-fired pizzas (the crumbled sausage with onion and oregano is terrific), wind up with a chocolate gelato to finish, and you'll have no complaints. And thank the Lord that Vento is not in Times Square-even though at times it feels like it is.

Fiamma Osteria, designed by Jeffrey Beers, is the latest venture of Stephen Hanson and B.R. Guest Restaurants, who have taken over all four floors of the building. Mr. Hanson also owns Isabella's, Ruby Foo's, Blue Water Grill and the recently opened Blue Fin, a bustling mega-seafood restaurant in Times Square.

Fiamma(Italianfor "flame") is very different; it's not big and brash, but low-key and more grown-up. The décor is sleek and modern: Low-lit, wood-paneled dining rooms done up in warm tones of red and brown are hung with mirrors and small paintings, and the tables are set with white linen cloths and candles. Even though it has a staff dressed by Nicole Miller and Michael Stars, Brazilian music on the sound system and banquettes upholstered in black leather (with pale green velveteen along the back), Fiamma doesn't feel like a Soho restaurant at all. It's like one of those Michelin-starred restaurants in Italy that tourists drive miles to get to for that one blow-out meal of the trip. Were it written up in the Guide Michelin, Fiamma would probably be described as " vaut le voyage ."

"The hallmark of Italian cooking is simplicity," says executive chef Michael White. "It's all about ingredients." Mr. White is from Spiaggia in Chicago. Before that, he worked at Ristorante San Domenico in Imola, Italy (a restaurant to which Fiamma bears more than a passing resemblance). If you want to get an idea of exactly what Mr. White means when he speaks of simplicity, order the house-made garganelli. Each quill of pasta-which might be described by an advertising salesman as "individually hand-crafted" (rolled, in fact, one by one over a skewer with a reed comb)-is tossed in a creamy truffle butter with peas and strips of prosciutto. It's a classic dish that's elevated to another plane. Taste this and you'll understand why Fiamma needs three pasta cooks for just seven pasta dishes on the menu, which also include stracci, a wide-ribbon spinach pasta with braised rabbit Bolognese, and raviolini with braised veal shank.

The respect Mr. White has for his ingredients is evident throughout his cooking. Each component of a dish stands out; nothing is superfluous. Sautéed sea scallops served over a bed of fried baby artichokes and earthy black trumpet mushrooms come with a delicate mache salad which is tossed with a brown butter balsamic vinaigrette with truffle oil. The tuna carpaccio is an exercise in subtlety: A plate is covered with paper-thin slices of fish topped with fried capers, black olives and citrus oil. Shaved bottarga (gray mullet fish roe) adds a briny touch to the dish, which Mr. White tops off with a touch of lemon juice and peel and a couple strips of fennel.

If you ordered red mullet in Italy, it would come whole with the head on. Soho eaters are more skittish, so here you get two filets, served over fingerling potatoes warmed in olive oil, with oven-dried grape tomatoes and bitter arugula in a ring of salsa verde. The Muscovy duck breast is good, too. The richness of the meat is complemented by mostarda (spicy mustard fruits), saba (wine must), toasted hazelnuts, a balsamic vinaigrette and a jaunty apple chip stuffed with Taleggio cheese. The only dish that lacked sparkle-and I tasted it on two occasions-was the seared halibut, which was a tad dry. It came with white asparagus, braised red chard, caramelized salsify and a leek vinaigrette.

The meat is full of big, powerful flavors. A veal chop is cooked with a paste made of sage, garlic, sea salt, lemon peel and rosemary (I'm going to try this one on grilled meat at home) and comes with sweet-and-sour cipolline onions and a bundle of asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. Juicy, rare roast squab with a crisp skin arrives with a perky little custard made from the liver and seasoned with nutmeg.

To go with the food is a 400-bottle list of mostly Italian wines. There are many unusual boutique selections at reasonable prices and good choices by the glass. At the waiter's recommendation, we tried the Red Angel from Venezia Giulia ("Excellent-eucalyptus in the nose," pronounced the wine buff at our table).

The desserts-by Elizabeth Katz, the former pastry sous chef at Daniel-are gorgeous: They're made from Italian ingredients and are playful, original and sensual. The chocolate torta-made with crunchy layers of hazelnut and gianduja chocolate feuilletine-is decorated with a long coil of spun sugar and looks like some electrical contraption from Edison's day. It comes with chocolate sauce and a gianduja gelato rolled in the feuilletine. The banana chocolate tortino, adorned with an undulating tuile that looks like a sculpture by Richard Serra, is a revelation, made with a chocolate streusel layered with caramel rum sabayon, topped with caramelized banana slices and served with chocolate sorbet. But the most thrilling dessert of all is the crocchette: beignets made with fresh ricotta bound with crushed amaretti instead of flour. These puffs, which fill your throat like a custard, come with four dipping sauces that change daily, such as blood orange, raspberry, chocolate and espresso cream.

At the end of our dinner, the women were presented with small boxes of chocolates to take home.

The men at our table looked put out. "What about us?"

"The women are supposed to share," said the waiter, looking at me.

No way.