Another course of notable stature was the I Vincisgrassi; a lasagna from Chef Trabocchi’s home region of Le Marche in the upper calf of the Italian boot. The lasagna came with ovoli mushroom salad and black truffle. “Do you think these truffles came from a jar?” my companion asked me, testing the waters of his good fortune. From dining experience, most jarred truffles we have known were far smaller than these could possibly have been. Could they really be fresh? At this reasonable price? A quick search of this week’s version of the Fiamma dinner menu online shows the truffles are no longer listed and that the price has been reduced. So it looks as though we hit the fungus jackpot. The whole lasagna was delectable.

Finally it was time where that inevitable post-main question was popped, “Would you like to see the cheese menu or the dessert menu?” Yes, we would like to see them both. And so it was that we ordered a plate of three cheeses to share: Tomme du Berger, a semi-soft raw sheep- and goat’s-milk cheese from France; Capra Sardo, a hard goat’s-milk cheese from Sardinia; and Strachitunt, a cow’s-milk blue from Lombardy. The blue turned out to be quite mild. It’s hard to find a loser, though, when you’re dealing with three good cheeses and the attendant pageantry of sunflower honey, white wine jelly, quince paste, fig cake, and anise cookies.

While the cheeses were indulgent, dessert had several hard acts to follow, and didn’t quite measure up to its predecessors. The La Mela, featuring sheep yogurt mousse, compressed apples, apple consommé, and nepitella (an herb that smells like a mix of mint and oregano) was good, as was the Il Caramello, a combination of caramel textures (their word, not ours), nonino amaro gel, made from an Italian herbal liqueur, and vanilla.

A repeat visit for Fiamma’s tasting menu (as soon as tonight even) is in the future once a reservation can be secured. I encountered that beaming barman once again on the way out, and assured Javi that he has much to smile about: the new Fiamma is a tremendous success.-J.G.