Where Did Mercato Go? To GioBatta Alimentari, With Chef Francesco Buitoni
GioBatta Alimentari restaurant and market in Tivoli, New York captures the familial generosity of the Italian kitchen in its most honest and delicious form, using the best fresh ingredients, prepared with passion. The husband-and-wife team behind the former much-loved Mercato Osteria and Enoteca in Red Hook, Chef Francesco Buitoni and wife Michele Platt opened GioBatta last year so they could offer their high-level dishes in a more communal and approachable setting.
GioBatta’s fine dining program has only improved on Chef Buitoni’s work at Mercato, which was twice nominated for a James Beard Award. The addition of the market brings that same quality to the sun-drenched lunch counter and the cooler filled with enough take-home Italian classics like lasagna and eggplant parm to feed a family, party or small army.
GioBatta Alimentari is a mouthful of a name but behind it is a legacy. Chef Buitoni’s five-times great grandfather was a barber in Sansepolcro, Italy. In his 50s, Giovanni (nicknamed GioBatta) and wife Guilia Buitoni used their savings to start a humble handmade pasta business that’s grown into a multinational brand. The Buitoni of Tivoli still makes all his pasta by hand.
Alimentari, in Italian, is a word meaning to nourish, and is a tidy summation of Francesco and Michele’s passion for sharing food and community.
The restaurant and market opened Friday, March 13, 2020. Lockdown began the following Monday. It was chaos. But, Chef Buitoni said, in a weird way, the pandemic allowed them to have a kind of elongated soft opening and rollout. They quickly found that the more relaxed takeout-friendly menu was well suited for the moment. Had they stayed at Mercato, Buitoni said, the business really would have suffered.
“It was almost a blessing in disguise. We could regroup,” he says. “Having been through the pandemic was a learning experience. You learn how people are dependent on you.”
Buitoni said feeding the community and providing a sense of normalcy through the familiar but elevated Italian staples helped his neighbors and gave his family and staff a sense of purpose. It reinforced their somewhat controversial decision to move from the Village of Red Hook to Tivoli.
“People thought we were crazy for closing Mercato’s,” Buitoni says. “They asked why we would close a successful restaurant, but this is what we wanted. We like the feeling of community. It’s off the beaten path so it’s like a discovery. Bard students give the village a lively energy. People just sit outside on the street, hang out and talk.”
The biggest change was the volume of food he now makes but he never sacrifices the quality of ingredients. The idea of it seems to make him shudder. It’s not just that good ingredients taste better, he said, but they go farther and last longer. Buitoni uses plenty of imported items when needed, like olive oil from his family’s still operational orchard in Italy (you can purchase the oil in the market), but the reason he’s here and not still in Manhattan where he started his career was the draw of the ingredients available to all around him from Hudson Valley farms.
The menu at GioBatta is stacked with dishes that regulars crave all year 'round but Buitoni encourages first-time guests to take advantage of the dishes that highlight seasonal ingredients from farms just down the road from the restaurant.
Right now, eat salads, he says. Local produce is the star of dishes like the classic caprese ($16) and bresaola with burrata, bresaola carpaccio and white truffle and lemon-dressed arugula ($18).
As for mains, the whole branzino is always a favorite. Showcasing Buitoni’s straightforward cooking philosophy, the succulent head-on-fish is always flanked by local, seasonal vegetables. There’s also always a great steak on the menu and of course handmade pasta. Orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe ($21) and bucatini carbonara ($22) are the storybook ideal of Italian pasta, and a dish like goat cheese gnudi in a puree of kale and porcini sauce surprises ($22).
Another thing GioBatta has that Mercato’s didn’t is a fryer, allowing for mouth-watering arancini ($13) and calamari. Chef and fryer are waiting patiently for this year’s zucchini blossoms.
In house they are baking focaccia, baguettes, olive oil cake, biscotti and deserts like tiramisu ($9) and panna cotta ($9), and a lot more.
Over on the market side, there are take-home trays of family-style dishes, quality Italian ingredients and everything you could ask for in a lineup of Italian sandwiches. The Parma with prosciutto di Parma, tomato, arugula and balsamico ($15), the cotto ham, fontina and truffle ($14) or the polpette, using the restaurant’s meatballs, garlic marinara and provolone ($14) are all just exactly what you want in house or for a picnic on a midsummer afternoon.
“It still matters to me that the quality and the experience never slips,” Buitoni says. “This is a family restaurant. Michele and I did this together. The design, the feel, that’s all her. There’s something about having a family like I do. The legacy is always in the back of my head. If I have a problem in the kitchen I always ask my ancestors for help — in a funny way. I actually do. What I’ve been through, COVID, is nothing. compared to how hard they worked. They would respect what we do here.”
GioBatta Alimentari
69 Broadway Tivoli, NY
(845) 757-2567
Summer Hours: Friday through Tuesday, noon - 8:30 p.m. Closed Wednesday and Thursday.
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