I had reason to believe that the restaurant gods were taunting me. Over the years, a small storefront half a block from my house, in Greenwich Village, was occupied by one restaurant after another, and none of them turned out to be where I wanted to eat.
My neighbors claim that only a few restaurants ever did business in that space; to me, it seemed like dozens. As each renovation began, I’d try to divine from the building permits pasted in the window which kind of restaurant would emerge. I had big dreams—a Chinese restaurant serving the food of a province so culinarily superior that when its inhabitants visit Szechuan or Hunan they always bring their own lunch, for instance, or a fried chicken joint whose cook had, miraculously, replicated the recipe of the legendary Kansas City panfryer Chicken Betty Lucas.
I don’t remember the names of the establishments that appeared instead, dashing my dreams. I do remember that one of them served the sort of overcomplicated food that reminded me of the generic restaurant I used to refer to as La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine.
Then, in 2006, along came Joey Campanaro and Little Owl. I realized that this was what I’d been waiting for all along—a place with a neighborhood restaurant’s feel and a destination restaurant’s food, a place where a casually dressed waiter could be taking your order for “gravy meatball sliders” as well as for “Parmesan truffle asparagus.” And it was so close that I began referring to one table as my UPS table, since it offered a view that enabled me to intercept anyone who was about to make a delivery to my house. I might have concluded that I was, at last, being rewarded for some childhood good deed, except that, offhand, I couldn’t remember any childhood good deeds that might qualify.
After a dozen years, my craving for the aforementioned gravy meatball sliders still approaches an addiction. Others are similarly afflicted. Gravy meatball sliders are Little Owl’s best-known dish, despite competition from the pork-chop-with-butter-beans faction. It’s in keeping with the spirit of the place that its best-known dish is not something Joey Campanaro developed while working in some of the country’s most distinguished restaurants but something his grandmother made for him when he was growing up in South Philly. The proprietors of La Maison de la Casa House, Continental Cuisine would not approve of putting it on the menu of a restaurant that serves lobster bisque and filet mignon. Chicken Betty Lucas would.
— Calvin Trillin