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Meet Eric Lind from Inatteso Pizza Bar

Address: 28 West Street, Battery Park City, New York NY 10004

By Anu Kapur, Publisher, Lower Manhattan Macaroni Kid December 22, 2020

Eric, please tell us a little about yourself.

I am the chef and operating partner at Inatteso Pizza Bar and Inatteso Café along with my lovely wife Elizabeth. We live in Brooklyn where we have raised our three children ages 19,16 and13. I’ve had the great fortune of working for and being mentored by many talented chefs, restaurateurs, and co-workers in NYC, New Orleans, and Italy over the past couple of decades.  


What’s your favorite thing about owning a restaurant?  

Oddly enough I like the responsibility. You have no choice but to be the leader and be motivated every day.  


What is your favorite menu item at Inatteso Pizzabar? What’s your personal favorite?

Our most popular item other than pizza is our tagliatelle Bolognese. Handmade pasta, slow-braised beef and pork ragu butchered and ground in house, parmesan cheese, easy customer favorite. My personal favorite currently is our pappardelle with red wine braised boar with olives and rosemary. 


What’s your favorite ingredient? And your least favorite one.

The one ingredient I probably use more than most chefs is fennel and its derivatives. I’ll add a little fennel seed to soups and stocks, fennel pollen to marinades and salts, and raw fennel to wake up lettuce greens, cut through fatty and pickled foods. My least favorite is so easy, and of course, it's absolute sacrilege working in an Italian restaurant, but I can’t stand eggplant. I can deal with Thai and Japanese eggplant, but I can’t love purple eggplant. I’ve tried, I can’t do it.


What’s your favorite tool in the kitchen?

I know it’s boring, but my chef knife is my favorite tool. I always tell young cooks who don’t respect their knives “a chef with-out a knife is like a truck driver with-out a truck”. Some get it, some don’t.


Which is your favorite wine, and favorite cheese?

I love wine, it’s easy to say Barolo or Brunello (I’m a big fan of both), but I really love when a wine expresses time and place perfectly. An example would be when you have a very terroir-driven natural Sangiovese that is totally funky while outside fire roasting some wild game, and garden-fresh vegetables, it just tastes right for the time and place. These are my favorite wines, when you take in the whole experience and can recall the flavors when the memory of the moment comes to you. I’m a big cheese guy also, I love all Alpine cheeses, tangy bufala cheese, aged goudas, stinky soft cheese, blue cheese, you name it and I love it. 


How has the pandemic affected you? 

Apart from the obvious financial downturn in business, it has made me realize how vulnerable we are as restaurant workers and owners. When you have a whole industry near collapse, you just can’t pick up and find another chef, or server job so easy. I’m grateful to still be working, but there is uncertainty about the profession that I hadn’t experienced in the past. The lack of security in the restaurant business has absolutely caused some sleepless nights.


How can our neighborhood support you?

The neighborhood has been great. Most customers have been very understanding of the fact that things are just different right now, and not always ideal for staff and customers alike. Just keep ordering from and visiting as many independent restaurants as you can as often as you can.


When you are not busy with work, what can we find you doing?

Away from work I enjoy skateboarding and bicycle riding with the kids, gardening, watching baseball and hockey, movies, hanging on the stoop with my wife, relaxing over long dinners with the family.


Can our readers order online?

Absolutely. Customers can order directly from our website inatteso.com, by phone, or through GrubHub/Seamless.


Thank you!



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