Trattoria Lazarus

Babbo (Greenwich Village)

RESTAURANTS • First Person

Why resurrect Babbo? After all, the Washington Square Park-adjacent townhouse restaurant that made Mario Batali a household name wasn’t even the best or most loved of his spots before they were shuttered following the chef’s fall from grace. At that point, 21 years into its existence, Babbo’s once-groundbreaking hallmarks — loud rock in a beautiful dining room, serving high-end Italian featuring lesser-known ingredients and preparations — had since become standard-issue. The places and chefs it inspired had since lapped it, and new post-Babbo, post-Batali institutions have popped up in its place: those of Missy Robbins, Rita Sodi and Jodi Williams, Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, to name a few.

Stephen Starr, the restaurateur whose hands Babbo ended up in, could’ve done, like, anything else with that space, which in its later years was Babbo’s best feature. But what’s old is new again for Starr, at the Meatpacking District’s Pastis (which he revived with once-sole-proprietor and now co-owner Keith McNally), at Buddakan (where he’s put Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese Food in charge), and now at Babbo, where he’s returned Mark Ladner, the chef behind the best of Batali’s spots, to New York.