It is difficult enough for a well-trained chef to master a classic dish, no matter how simple, so the challenge of creating innovative dishes based on proven techniques can be a very slippery slope and one that can easily push a chef out of the limelight he so eagerly sought. And when a chef is not professionally trained, menus can be mere ego trips instead of soul satisfying.
       Once in a great while, however, a new star twinkles without much of a professional history and chef Zod Arifai appears to be someone with a bright future in the New York galaxy. Looking like Russia’s mad monk Rasputin (or perhaps a shaggier version of John Wick), Arifai seems to possess an intensity tempered by very careful scrutiny, choosing his ingredients carefully and filtering his creativity through balance and restraint. Where some chefs merely wish to show off in modernist frenzies, Arifai aims to please his guests with legitimate flair and culinary intelligence.
      Arifai hails from Kosovo, but has been here since he was eight years old, and grew up to be a rock musician who toured around the world. But he found a second, all-consuming vocation in cooking and had success with his own restaurants in New Jersey, including Juniper, Blu, Next Door and The Duke and Elephant, all now closed.
      Wicked Jane, whose name doesn’t mean anything but just popped into Arifai‘s head while driving, is set on a restaurant-rich street in Greenwich Village, all with outdoor seating for the moment. Inside Wicked Jane there is a bar-lounge space where, at least for the moment, the menu is à la carte. Up a few steps to the rear is a spartan dining room meant to show off Arifai’s food not the décor. The music—clearly a musician’s, not a chef’s, list—plays way in the background for once, to be enjoyed if one wishes to hear it. The problem is that the lighting in the room is so low that the beauty and color of the dishes are subdued to the point where a flashlight is needed to see just how pretty they are. Low lighting is never really romantic in a restaurant where people want to see the rest of the guests.  Photo: Layne Able
      The tables are big, round and well set with double linens, candles, fine silverware and a range of excellent stemware for various wines. The wine list, which is well chosen if modest in size, is due for an infusion by well-dressed sommelier Alvaro Mondaca (previously at Gramercy Tavern), whose own passion for the labels he buys makes for a quick education about sometimes obscure bottlings. Allow him to choose the wines to best accompany Arifai’s food.
         The prix fixe menu of six courses is quite reasonable —make that a bargain—$125 ($75 extra for wine pairings), with the addition of three hors d’oeuvres that include a small foie gras-stuffed cannoli, chicken cheesecake and duck skin with yogurt and pomegranate (left), none of which sound all that remarkable on their own but are all carefully incorporated as bite-size bon bons and have their own textures and seasoning to make them exciting openers.
         Our first course was a lustrous mackerel with a light edamame purée, and subtly spicy ginger cumin sauce, served with an Austrian Grüner-Veltliner 2018. With this arrived generous slices of house-made sourdough bread with brown butter, chicken jus and olive oil for  dipping (below). We were off to a very good start.
      The next course was called “onion carbonara” but bears scant resemblance to that classic Roman pasta, here sauced with a creamy Parmigiano-pecorino foam and slices of autumn’s black truffles. It might have been far more savory had the onions not been so raw and crunchy. This came with a Sassella 2016. Next came Canadian (farm-raised) salmon of very good quality, though the vanilla oil and soy caramel was a bit too sweet.
      After that came three superb dishes. Velvety skate—a fish you sadly do not often see in restaurants—was served with soft, buttery sautéed leaks in an herbal seafood broth, accompanied by a Givry  Prémier Cru 2019. Exceptionally flavorful swordfish also had a sweet component in a cranberry sauce but balanced with dried olives and chive oil. The wine was a Mercurey Prémier Cru 2019.
         Apparently Arifai’s roasted duck breast has become his signature item, and it’s easy to see why: the duck (left) is cooked so as to have the crispiness and fat of the skin complementing the rosy meat, and as a fall dish, the braised cabbage and fig-red wine emulsion worked beautifully, not least with the choice of a Château Ormes de Pez 2012.
       At this point in the meal we were not sated, which says a lot about the portions and lightness of Arifai’s cooking, so we were happy when a cheese course arrived in the form of a house-made fresh white cheese in a grape soup with fig, slightly compromised by what seemed to be the taste of celery. The Quinaterelli Amarone della Valpolicella 1997 made perfect sense then.
      Bigaro granita with spiced apples was both refreshing and bracing before a finale of  a seasonal pumpkin custard that was such simple goodness, served with walnut and caramel.
     Wicked Jane, by any name, would be an impressive debut, especially since it is such an ambitious restaurant and Arifai is such a highly creative chef, doggedly set on making it a success downtown with the kind of cuisine more usual uptown.  Arifai may well turn out to be a chef’s chef, even among those with more training than he’s had. That is a very rare thing to find and one to be gratefully applauded. 

Dinner is served Tues.-Sat.

Note: NYC Health Dept. rules require both staff and guests 12 or older to  show proof they have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

         Katie and David called the harbor police and told them to come out to their location, where within thirty minutes they found Iacobello and Frascella, his head bandaged with his own t-shirt, sitting tied up on the deck.
       The switchblade was still stuck in the bulkhead and Frascella’s blood left as it was.  The boat pilot was bound and locked below deck.
         It didn’t take long for the police to see what had happened, and, with Katie’s recording to back up their side of the story, she and David felt relieved when the police officer said to Iacobello, “We’ve been waiting a long time for you to do something stupid, Frankie.”
         Back in Naples the following day Katie and David received phone calls from both Lucadamo and Primerano congratulating them and expressing relief that their American friends were safe. Both said that the  couple would have to stay in Naples for a few days during the indictment and preliminary depositions and have to return for the trial, which would be months away.
         “We never really took our eyes off Iacobello,” said Lucadamo, “but I’m sorry he had to try to murder you two in order to catch him at something.”
         “Did you know he was Mafia, not Camorra?” asked David.
         “Si, and we knew he kept contact with some of his old friends. But the Camorra doesn’t like to see Mafiosi anywhere on their territory, so we felt Iacobello was not going to make trouble.”
         Primerano told David that if he and Katie had gone to Palermo, Sicily, looking for the gold, they might not have made it to their hotel.  
     “You’re lucky you two chose Naples,” he said. “There’s never been any evidence that the Camorra was involved with the transfer of the gold to America, even though Vito Genovese was Neapolitan by birth.”
         After receiving the news that she and David would have to stay in Naples, she called her editor and told him the story of the attempted murder and why they’d have to remain in Italy.
         “What’d he say?” asked David.
         “He’s ecstatic that we almost got killed!  He said it was going to be a fabulous part of the whole story.  There’s an old expression in the news business: ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’”
         “So he’s fine with us sticking around Naples for a while?”
         “Absolutely, especially since I told him the Neapolitan police would pay for our room and board while we’re here. Then he said, `Well, don’t waste your time there just eating and drinking. Get back on the Capone story.’”
         David laughed and said, “Ha, I’m happy to oblige, but I haven’t a clue where we turn next. Our attempted murder will make a good story, but it turned out to have nothing to do with Capone’s gold. One good thing, the Mafia will probably not send anyone up here to knock us off after what happened with Frankie and Johnny.”
         Katie smiled with relief and said, “True, and now we’ve got carte blanche, for a while at least, to look under every cobblestone in Naples and maybe get some new leads.”
         David said, “I know, that’s terrific. But I have to tell you, I’m not too hopeful. If Capone kept back some gold from Mussolini—and we’re pretty sure he did—where the hell could he stash it in Italy? It could be anywhere.”
         “Maybe, except that Al himself never set foot over here and he had no known connections with anyone in northern Italy and he would never have sent it to the Mafia in Sicily.  I still think the gold is somewhere here in the region of Naples. Some bank account. Maybe even a branch of the Vatican Bank (above).”
         “I’m pretty sure Primerano and Lucadamo would have investigated those possibilities over the last fifty years. But it would be very difficult otherwise to hide that much gold—we’re talking about hundreds of ingots.  I doubt it’s stuffed under some relative’s mattress.”
         “Do you think it’s possible some of the gold was never off-loaded from the ocean liners?” asked Katie.
         “Hard to imagine it just sitting there for years, undiscovered.  And, if it was, it’s joined the gold from the rumrunner at the bottom of the sea because those ships were sunk in the war.”
         “You don’t have any other friends in the police forces here you might contact?”
         “Nope.”
         “Well, then let’s use this weekend to do a little sightseeing, have some good meals, and relax after our charming outing on the Stella di Mare.”
         “Can’t argue with that. How about I show you a few places I knew while I was here, and you can plan the rest of the sightseeing.”
         “Deal.  You know, I really want to see Capri and the Amalfi Coast.”
         “Fine with me. We can rent a car and drive down the coast, then take a ferry to Capri. (above).  Or we could take a ferry from Sorrento, then catch one to a town like Positano.”
         “I like the first idea. Rent a car, drive down the coast, save Capri for last.  Hey, maybe Capone sent the gold to Capri!”
         “Gee, how lucky can we get?”
         Kate and David made plans, first to do some sightseeing in Naples, then on Saturday to rent a car and drive down the Amalfi Coast.  The former began with the requisite tourist stops—for this they rented Vespa scooters—churches like Santa Maria degli Angeli and Santa Chiara and monuments like the "Statue of the Nile," Castel Nuovo, and underground Naples, and the great museums of the city, rich with Neapolitan baroque and painters who followed the dramatic style of Caravaggio.  They also booked tickets for the opera at San Carlo one night (right).
         Meanwhile, they ate well in small trattorias and drank coffee at Caffè Gambrinus (left) on the Piazza Trieste e Trento.
         On Saturday they rented a Fiat Cinquecento—David said its small size was better for navigating the narrow, serpentine roads of the Amalfi Coast—and headed south on the A3 highway, stopping at Pompeii to see the ruins caused by Mount Vesuvius more than two thousand years before.
         “You know something,” said David.  “We should at least stop for a little while at Castellamare (below). It’s on the way to Sorrento. It’s where Capone’s family moved from Angri before leaving for America.  It’s also famous for what was called the Castellamarese War between two Mafia families in Chicago and New York back in the 1930s. Very bloody business.”
         “I’m happy to visit Castellamare,” said Katie, “but that Mafia war you mention referred to another Castellamare, in Sicily, not here.  I’d also like to visit Angri, where Al’s story really did begin.”
         “Well, that’s fine with me.  We can do Angri tomorrow. It’s close to Castellamare. ” David looked at the road map they bought at a newsstand. “This looks like it’s only about fifteen kilometers from Castellamare.  That’s what, ten miles?”
         “Good,” said Katie. “I can go to Mass in the same church where Al Capone’s mother prayed for him.  I think even you would enjoy that.”
         David shrugged and said, “I guess I can last an hour at Mass . . . for the sake of our investigation.”