Casetta
61 Hester St. New York, NY 10002
In the spring of 2016 an old friend of mine had to make a difficult decision. He was set to leave New York City, for good, for Istanbul where he had plans, and a lease, to open a restaurant of his own. However, that spring into summer, turmoil between adversarial factions in the military’s command and the office of the executive led to tanks in the streets and eventually a coup. My friend decided to back out of his plans and instead, reluctantly, took a job at the soon to open Metrograph Commissary where he became my mentor and friend. Aydin did his best to teach me, someone who had only worked at a “dive bar” for half a year, how to properly tend a busy restaurant. First, to tackle a ticket of drinks all requiring different timing and preparation, one up, two rocks, three shaken, chill the coupes glasses with ice and water, pour the alcohol for the martini in a mixing glass with ice (the alcohol can sit on the ice for a little while while you build the three cocktails in shakers), pour the two rocks drinks and let them sit as you will drop ice on them later when finishing everything off. Three drinks in one shaker while maybe not perfect will work in the midst of a rush so you can stir the up drinks with the free hand. Shake until the steel of the shaker is nice and cold and starting to sweat. Stop stirring, dump the ice chilling the coupe. Pour the shaken drinks into a Collins glass, ice everything, pour stirred cocktail into coupe, garnish all around, and serve. Waste not any moment on inefficiency. Don’t turn your wrist like that when you stir the mixing glass, hold the bar spoon between your ring finger and the webbing of your thumb and move to stir in a back-and- forth motion; it may not seem like much now but on your hundredth martini you don’t want your wrists hurting. Lastly, the most important ingredient in any drink is water. Either the water of the ice that makes the gin cold when you stir it and it melts to become a martini or the water of the rocks in a glass of scotch that slowly softens the dark liquor or the crushed ice of a tiki drink with more surface area quickly diluting the sweet juices and syrups. One time years ago I made frozen watermelon margaritas for a friend’s birthday party by freezing the fruit and adding a whole bottle of Espolon without adding any ice: we all suffered for this and were wasted by the time cake was cut. In this way, Aydin also taught me about drinking in general. How that there is a way to make more perfect the union between you and your habit.
Aisa Shelley has opened his second business in less than a year’s time at 61 Hester Street called Casetta (cottage in Italian). It’s only a short jaunt from his other new venue, Casino on East Broadway (Italian for small house). I recently sat outside of Casetta sipping an iced Americano, with oat milk, in a Collins glass, with crushed ice, and mused how even with all the water and oat and ice I could taste the husks of the espresso beans. I sat reading Gary Indiana’s memoir I Can Give You Anything But Love my friend Rae had just given me a flight I took to Amsterdam three days ago and I thought to myself “I can’t read a memoir of someone who’s work I’ve not read a lick of.” I gave her my copy of Cannery Row by John Steinbeck; a favorite of mine as I am a fan of any ‘story of a village’ type writing. As I sat there at the new neighborhood cafe exchanging books with a neighbor and thinking about Paris on wicker chair at a circular cafe table, that could be described as Parisian in aesthetic, I realize I am hungry and order the poached eggs with beans, which Rae will tease me for because she think I’m obsessed with beans, and a Coke. The Coke arrives in the same Collins glass as the Americano but with small, non-crushed ice more befitting the nature of its character. Aisa’s new place respects ice.
Casetta is at a store front once home to Le Studio, a lovely and tasty little place for arepas and wine which, while it was open, seemed to be plagued by uncertainties and schedule changes so as to never really become fully reliable; save for a brief period of time one summer when a friend of mine took over as somm. They also had a catering kitchen, or actual studio of some kind, to the left and the cafe was on the right. Casetta, as its new tenant, has knocked down the wall and combined the two fronts to make one large airy dining room with many cafe tables to choose from and four little window nooks that are bathed in light most of the day this time of year. They play calm instrumental music inside, a touch louder than necessary, and there’s two bathrooms which is one more than either of the two Dimes establishments. Outside are 4 or so tables and much lighter foot traffic than Canal or Orchard or anywhere around here really. Hopefully this instills in it the quality of having to be visited on purpose. My friend Justin, who lives around the corner, lamented this recently saying Casetta has blown up his spot, “Alex no no this is no good! There are cute girls and fashion bloggers on my street now! Hester street is my back door street to go to E-Smoke in my PJs! I can’t have to think about what I’m wearing to walk down my back block!” Aisa laughed when I told him this, “yeah sorry Just it’s over for him.”
Hester has had a cafe on this block for my entire New York career thus far. Back before Le Studio, there was Barzino, a small Brazilian tapas spot, owned by a tall handsome hat wearing man named Leo. He would park his red vintage Alfa Romeo convertible out front and serve caipirinhas, linguiça and pão de queijo. Barzino closed before Le Studio came around and the storefront is now a gallery. Full circle it feels now to see, across the street at Casetta, Aisa’s red 1977 Ducati sport desmo 500; a fitting ride for a small Italianesque cafe.
The menu sports mostly small bites with a fishy bent. On my very first visit I had the oysters (7 for $24 though I’m not sure if they were just being kind with the 7th or if that’s policy) and they were delicious. Actually they were the best oysters I’ve had maybe ever or at least since the special, previously extinct, species I had at a cafe in Paris last summer. They were native to the Channel but had been farmed back into existence in Japanese waters. Not particularly relevant but still true: the bathroom on the left at Casetta has a 8.5” x 11” Japanese movie poster for Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye; which I saw on a date at Metrograph recently. There are a few sandwiches on the menu, the tuna variety of is the size of an Uno deck so I would recommend them if you hate having $16 in your pocket and are just a wee bit peckish. There’s a chilled bowl of cherries on the back of the menu, which come perched on a bed of cubes, slightly larger than those in my Collins glass of Coke. The cherries are perched with precarious posture, on their frozen setting, not dissimilar to the rocky sea bathers shifting intermittently to achieve comfort amongst the jetty below my friend Elena’s balcony window in Marseille. I sat there trying to remember what it was about the consideration for temperature control which reminded me of something kindredly transatlantic. Something of the wonder attached to being able to make water frozen solid and apply it to so many different uses in places that have been doing so before it were possible and have still the feeling of having recently adapted it to their repertoire. I think of the men pushing carts in Naples shaving and flavoring off a big block of the stuff by what I feel tempted to call a beach but was more like a musky collar of sand between road and rock and mediterranean. Or the Colombian men I saw selling ice on a beach we were tricked into going to just south of Cartagena in November of 2016. Or the citronella lady on the Anse de la Fausse Monnaie, in Marseille, who sells her lemonades near frozen so they stay cold as they melt and you drink in no particular rush; like a virgin nutcracker you can definitely add your now hot bottle of white wine to to help it reach a more pleasantly imbibable elemental state. The chemical state of the thing, ice, being part of the experience and therefore product. Small choices by Casetta which channel the essence of these other places and their approach to time which is to say acceptance of it rather than applying too much force. On the calmest street in an otherwise frenzied area between the two Bridges and many more eateries is a small solace. Perhaps not for my sneaky pajamaed friend Justin but definitely for the rest of us.