Hitting It Hard at Cuoco's Soft Opening

In my 15-plus years as a food critic, I was never invited to a "soft opening" for obvious reasons. But now that I'm out there, some pretty sweet offers come along, including a special pre-opening sneak preview last weekend of the latest from Tom Douglas.

Cuoco is Italian for fucking awesome pasta. Seriously, the first thing you see when walking through the door into the gorgeous dining room is the pasta production area. (Manned Saturday evening by Herschell Taghap, aka @SpecialDark on Twitter.) If you're smart, you'll point to whatever's being rolled and say: I'll have some of that.

So, here's how a soft opening works: You order from the menu, putting the kitchen through its paces. And, damn, I would never have guessed it was only the second night of service. I'm not just saying this because I didn't have to spend a dime for this memorable meal, I swear.

Our adventurous three-top started by diving into a potpourri of offal: Lovely lamb's tongue, sweetbreads with wine-soaked grapes, duck gizzards, and the best damn tripe I've ever eaten. OK, so it might be the only tripe I've ever eaten, but I felt confident the kitchen would do right by it and it did. So soft and only a little bit squishy.

I would have pushed away from the table fully sated at that point, but no. There was pasta to be twirled and scooped and slurped. We shared, family-style, gnocchi with nettle pesto, shockingly light and wonderful lasagna, buccatini and goat meatballs, and plin stuffed with rabbit and pork. We had bites of each and glasses of wine and later grilled chef de cuisine Stuart Lane, an alum of Cafe Juanita, where he worked for Holly Smith, who got her start with . . . Tom Douglas.

We even snuck upstairs to check out the funky cool Bravehorse Tavern and off in the corner of the upper floor, a but bigger than I expected, soon-to-open Ting Momo dumpling shop. "Do you want to try a pretzel?" our Alpha Dog hostess inquired. "Sure!" Bravehouse, which will officially open later this week, is going to have a pretzel bar and burgers and two shuffleboard tables! Hooray!

But, hey, shouldn't we get back downstairs and order some dessert? Our four-hour taste-o-rama ended with a trio of sweets, but honestly, I had hit the wall. I gamely took a few bites, but couldn't give the final course a clear assessment at that point. Oh, yes. The soft opening meal didn't come with your typical tab at the end, but rather a report to fill out. I did my best, but damn, after that third or fourth glass of wine, my handwriting is chicken scratch.

Speaking of handwriting, here's a bit of trivia: The menu's typeface is created with a special font taken from the script of Mr. D his own bad self. Clever!

I loved every minute of my first-ever soft opening. So much that I will definitely return as a pasta-loving, paying customer. Soon and often.

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