Gino's Focacceria

The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon?

Nuh-uh. Anellini, or "little rings," were around long before Franco-American's 1965 introduction of SpaghettiOs. Compared with the soupy commercial product, this old-school bowl of baked anellini ($8) was well-fortified with cheese and ground beef. Peas, too.

Previously, the vastedda special (below, $6) — stuffed with cow spleen, clouds of ricotta, and grated parmesan — was certainly filling, and the textures hovered somewhere between engaging and perturbing, but it was dry, dry, dry. Not especially salty, just dry, which seems to be the nature of the beast. Glad I had a 16-oz. soda close at hand.

Also shown: the "little panel" of deep-fried chickpea flour called a panella, a snack in itself or, when loosely stacked, fixings for a sandwich. This one was a freebie from a just-fried batch.

Gino's Focacceria
7118 18th Ave. (71st-72nd Sts.), Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
718-232-9073

Comments

[-The girl in the first booth]

Well lets see... I spent every single weekend for a year in Gino's which gave me a chance to try a little bit of everything and no matter what it was everything was good... from the Seafood salad to the Penne ala vodka, panelli, riceballs, EVERYTHIN!