A Voce

3, Mandarin Oriental, 10 Columbus Cir, New York, NY, United States

In the centre of New York’s Columbus Circle is a statue of Christopher Columbus by Italian sculptor Gaetano Russo. Just across the road in the Truman Center you’ll find another fine piece of Italian art, A Voce. With its swish, city-chic decor (they even have swivel chairs), it certainly has a swagger about it, and rightly so. A Voce gets an awful lot right. The salumi is the stuff of Italian legend – speck, nduja, sweet sopressata, salumi rossa… every sliver is spot on. So too the antipasti: pork belly with figs, balsamic and pistachios is as perfect a salt-and-sweet dish as you’ll find. The sweetbreads with brussels, spätzle, speck, apple and caraway are none too shabby either. On to the pasta, and while the wild boar bolognese with Tuscan pecorino is a decent, rich, meaty dish, it pales in comparison to the secondi. The double pork chop with abalone, mushrooms, arugula and lemons is a show-stealing dish. It’s jurassic in size and yet still sweet and succulent throughout, no mean feat. Russo would most certainly approve.