IT seems that no one knows what to call the neighborhood that Giorgione 508 calls home. Jorge Neves, a partner in the two-month-old spot, its older sibling Giorgione around the corner and the Portuguese restaurant Pćo up the block — someone who should by all accounts have a name for where he goes to work every day — gave what amounted to a verbal shrug when I put the question to him.
Hudson Square, an old name for the nabe, is certainly a front-runner for what we'll eventually call it, though the real estate blog curbed.com has thrown plenty of other options into the mix, like WeVar (west of Varick Street) and HoHo (between Houston and the Holland Tunnel). NoLIta must have seemed silly at one time too, right?
Giorgione 508 is easier to peg: it's a place for the up-and-coming neighborhood to grow up around.
Future residents of Philip Johnson's Urban Glass House will be able to feed the hangovers they earned at the Ear Inn the night before with breakfast dishes like grits with green onions and ham ($4.75) or shirred eggs with lentils and bacon in a puff pastry shell ($12).
There's a roster of sandwiches and pastries available at lunch and a small selection of fancy provisions that are hard to find in the 'hood, like Niman Ranch bacon and organic eggs, on sale until dinnertime. Would you expect anything else from a restaurant where the celebrity ex-grocer Giorgio DeLuca is a partner?
At night the restaurant eases into more of a cafe vibe — a place to eat lightly and eat well and have a little bit to drink. If this nameless neighborhood were mine, Giorgione 508's roasted tomato soup ($5) would be part of my weekly routine. The rich tomato component deftly straddles soupiness and pulpiness, a dollop of ricotta adds a suave creaminess and a faint tang, and a few spoonfuls of aromatic basil pesto push it over the top. If only they could figure out a way to can that.
Salads and appetizers, like a plate of roasted beets, oranges and ricotta ($7) or a few dainty slices of milk-poached veal topped with a mild olive-artichoke sauce ($9), are generally satisfying even if the portions are small. The best was a combo of cooked-down cabbage, braised bacon and sherry vinegar ($8), a helping of which would be perfect to help shake off the winter weather that we may or may not end up having this year.
Pasta is the specialty of the house. It's hard to figure out where the chef, Alex Schindler, who worked at Starwich before taking over stewardship of both Giorgione restaurants six months ago, learned to work pastas the way he does, but it's certain that he has a knack for them. The ricotta and marjoram ravioli in a sauce of burst cherry tomatoes, peas and butter ($14) is a knockout, as good as ravioli anywhere in the five boroughs. Mushroom lasagna ($14) and a dish of broad noodles sauced with braised pork shoulder and onions ($11) are both excellent eating.
Simplicity reigns among the main courses. Two grilled lamb chops ($16) — the delicate and tender kind of lamb chops, from the ribs — are served with a few Brussels sprouts and a scattering of potatoes. The steak ($15) is a small, but not too small, portion of grilled rib-eye, served with a dice of roasted root vegetables and a touch of scallion butter. Scallions make another appearance in a broth that accompanies a serving of scallops and wilted arugula ($14).
Other seafood dishes work — branzino with braised carrots and peas ($14), two grilled prawns over white beans and chorizo ($16) — with the exception of the "shellfish pot" ($15), a mini-bouillabaisse that is fishy, unfocused and one of the few portions small enough to seem stingy.
The portions at Giorgione will, I'd predict, frustrate those who measure the quality of their sandwiches by the foot or equate heft with value. But they are perfectly calibrated to the crowd that's already claimed the restaurant, a mix of old SoHo, an effortlessly stylish group prone to tasteful black sweaters and dramatic glasses, and a younger, trendsetting group, like one of the Queer Eye guys having dinner with a friend or a pair of men at the long bar critiquing Polaroids from the day's fashion shoot between glasses of wine.
GIORGIONE 508
508 Greenwich Street (Spring Street); (212) 219-2444.
BEST DISHES Tomato soup; braised slab bacon; all the pastas; grilled lamb chops; scallops; braised farro; desserts.
PRICE RANGE Appetizers, $5 to $9; main courses, $11 to $16; sides, $5; drinks and desserts, $7 to $11.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
HOURS 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS All on one level.