Fregola Freak | Fine Furious Life

Fregola Freak

Fregola. I dreamed up all sorts of reasons to justify my conviction that these chewy little guys were named for strawberries. Fregola sounds awfully similar to fragole, doesn’t it? I figured the Sardinians might enjoy switching vowels, much as Sicilians like to do away with final vowels altogether (prosciutt’, soppressat’): those crazy islanders and their alphabet play! The strawberries I had in mind were fragoline di bosco, the teeny tiny elongated berries–often no bigger than a fingernail–that release a musky drop of clear syrup at the stem end when squeezed; I could see how a plate of fregola in red sauce could call to mind a punnet of fragoline…

Picturesque association, but no dice. Fregola, it turns out, means urge or hankering; it can be used to refer to animals in heat. (The word “freak”, which once was interchangeable with “caprice”, comes from the same root.) Pairing this pasta with puttanesca sauce would mean putting “Whorish Lust” on the menu.

Something like a whorish lust is, in fact, what overcame me yesterday when I read this blog post. It immediately put me in mind of the fregola dish at Tempo, an oily and lascivious preparation that tosses the pasta in squid rings, pine nuts and a rich, vinegary-sweet sauce that’s like caponata minus the eggplant. If I had to exist on only one dish for the rest of my life, I would have a hard time choosing between Tempo’s fregola and raw beef pho; the one thing standing between me and a standing Friday night appointment with Tempo is everything else on their menu.

So it was with all the blind urgency of lust that I convinced my boyfriend, offering to take me to dinner at Blue Ribbon, that we were better off at Tempo instead.

I want to like Tempo, I really do: Frank Bruni did. Points in its favor:

- It’s within walking distance from my apartment.
- It takes Friday night walk-ins.
- In an era of $35 entrees, it offers a $32, three-course prix fixe.
- It serves wines by the quarter-liter: just the right amount to see a person through three courses.
- THE FREGOLA.

Tempo has great potential. It really only needs to do two things to capitalize on it:

1. Edit, or at least agree to rotate through, the massive menu. 11 starters, 14 mains (plus 2 specials) and 9 desserts is a lot of work for a kitchen, especially when each dish is plated with more bells, whistles, squeezes and drizzles than you can imagine. The result is that Tempo does almost nothing (except THE FREGOLA) well. The concept and execution of the fregola tells me that there is an intelligent and creative mind behind the restaurant; the execution of everything else–I’ve eaten there with a fairly large party, and have been able to sample much of the menu–tells me that the kitchen is overwhelmed. And for what? So they can offer honey-roast butternut squash and sticky date pudding in late July? Edit!

2. Get a grip on the Moroccan notes that pervade and pollute a good part of the dishes. I don’t care if La Bruni praised the duck pastilla rolls in his review: I love duck and I love pastilla–a sweet and spicy phyllo pie from north Africa, rather like a chicken baklava–but Tempo’s tastes like a Chinatown egg roll smothered in hoisin sauce, dusted with enough confectioners sugar to ice a cupcake.

Onto last night’s meal (and further evidence that the Moroccan influence is inexpertly applied): I started with a chermoula shrimp salad (pictured below), which confused me, not only because of the very un-saladlike oil slick it left on the plate, but because chermoula is sort of like gremolata, and not at all like a spicy peanut sauce in which you might dunk chicken satay.

(My boyfriend had a soggy chopped salad. FAIL.)

The next course was the fregola, which not only lived up to two months of intermittent nostalgia and one afternoon’s violent craving, but even exceeded expectations. The textures of this dish are just beautiful: plump-to-bursting currants, rubbery squid rings, waxy pine nuts, and then the pearls of fregola themselves, a synthesis of all these textures. It came to the table perfectly seasoned and searingly hot, and I ate at least 40% more of it than I comfortably could.

(My boyfriend had the skirt steak special on a bed of panzanella. Bland steak, sour bread, absurd amounts of raw celery.)

I didn’t really want dessert after this, but if you’re paying for a three-course prix fixe, you might as well. The waiter wouldn’t let me order the pistachio gelato sundae and pretty much badgered me into getting the streusel cake (pictured, foreground); we compromised by putting a scoop of pistachio gelato directly onto the cake. For all that, there wasn’t a thread of streusel to be found on the enormously buttery cake: a fist-sized financier, really, and far too sweet to eat. My boyfriend got the deep-fried beignets, which are the fregola of the dessert menu: hot, fat pillows of exuberantly elastic dough, sanded with cinnamon sugar. I sank my teeth into one and moaned.

The next time a craving for fregola hits, I’m coming with a game plan: I’m going to bypass the entire appetizer section of the menu and ask for a plain green salad. That way, I can both avoid disappointment and save room for my beloved fregola and beignets.

Tempo
256 5th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 636-2020

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