A Rising Son Forges Ahead

New York is not a dynastic restaurant city in the way that some are. Here, in the competitive thick of things, culinary institutions that last beyond a generation are more likely to be bargain ethnic gems than high-end palaces. But Forgione, a name that conjures remembrances of the highest of the city's eating echelons, is a name that is now being carried forward with distinction.

Larry Forgione opened An American Place in 1983, popularizing the now-ubiquitous mantra of regional, seasonal, painstakingly sourced ingredients; reportedly, he even coined the term "free-range." Now his son, Marc, who like so many rising stars comes from the BLT-branded kitchens of Laurent Tourondel, has opened his own restaurant.

Forge, on a quiet TriBeCa block, has the comfortable feel that usually comes with experience. The absence of tablecloths should not be taken as a sign of casualness: Each meal is fully equipped with amuse-bouches and petit fours at either end, and the servers are soft-spoken and stiff. The dim, rustic space, decorated with Americana and antique cookware, teems with personnel: three hosts at the front podium, a bustling cast in the kitchen, and a team whose only role seems to be warming, buttering, and salting complimentary potato buns to order on a handsome vintage cast-iron stove that's the focus of the dining room.

The food is solidly American — American even to the point of pointedly poking fun at itself, as in an appetizer of chicken nuggets ($12). These could not be a farther cry from the lifeless, extruded, synthetic-tasting fast-food ones. You get three bite-size spheres of dark-meat, free-range chicken that tastes as rich as confit, breaded and fried and served with a smoky mayonnaise; it's a show-off dish, with tremendous flavor.

I won a wager with my companion that the cool watermelon soup she ordered ($15) would be poured into its bowl at the table, as today's fashion requires. The waiter poured the delicately spicy pink soup over a little nest of sweet crabmeat and cubes of melon; those were good, but the soup itself tasted somewhat watery, rather than deeply flavored, and it left a light film of grease on the lips.

Forge doesn't make many such slips. A tartare of excellent wild kampachi ($18) is served tightly packed, submerged in a mild broth. As you attack the mass of coarse-cut fish and lush avocado, it drifts apart in a slow choreography, leaving you with a bowl of delicious tartare soup. Spaghetti carbonara ($14) seems rather a dense and hearty idea for a summer appetizer, but quibbles like that are quickly forgotten as the last smear of pastured egg yolk is mopped up with an absorbent potato roll. The house-made noodles don't have the heavy dose of black pepper I expect in carbonara — instead they twine around thick, smoky hunks of Niman Ranch bacon and earthy pieces of mushroom.

A main course of two lamb chops ($34) includes only a couple of bites of meat. The rest are lumps of lamb fat that oughtn't be the diner's job to cut away and leave behind. A "risotto" (the quotation marks are Forge's) of small white beans glued together with cheese makes an unusual and not fully successful accompaniment. The rib eye steak ($33), in contrast, is completely fatless, boneless, and beautifully grilled, albeit without salt, a nice break from the popular steak salting philosophy that if a sprinkle is good, a handful is better. This makes room for the dish's gimmick: It's served with three salts on the side, which look appealingly dramatic, but to my palate all taste pretty similar. Three big and meaty best-of-breed scallops ($26), served with cockles, sorrel, and fresh corn, are sweetly creamy inside. They simply could not be better.

I worry that the large staff and high-grade ingredients are just an opening-months push, not financially sustainable in the long term. At least it gives young Mr. Forgione — whether his impressive talents be the product of nature, nurture, or neither — a chance to show what he can do.