NONNA
520 Columbus Ave.
212-579-3194
The Sunday-night “Sopranos Supper” was our favorite thing about Merge, thedefunct Greenwich Village restaurant whose chef, Sam DeMarco, has revived theItalian-American fixed-price meal at Nonna, the latest incarnation of a mutableUpper West Side restaurant. Unless you grew up Italian with a grandma whodedicated Sundays to stirring gravy and stuffing relatives, Nonna’s $19 feastmight seem excessive. The relentless red-sauce attack starts with steamymozzarella-stuffed arancini and moves on to a crisp Caesar salad servedfamily-style, succulent eggplant involtini, and the pièces de résistance:”Sunday sauce” studded with Italian sausages, tasty meatballs, and hunks ofbraciole, beside a bowl of al dente rigatoni that seems, at that point in themeal, fairly bottomless. But don’t surrender yet. The best is yet to come: afluffy, fragrant amaretto-spiked zeppole and honey to dip it in.