The grated cheese dusted a bowl of “scrippelle” soup whose rich broth bobbed with rolled-up crepes. It sprinkled over crusty hunks of Italian bread smeared with butter and spicy chili flakes. It frosted a mountaintop of gnocchi in deep red tomato sauce crowned with a flank steak braciola cooked to such tenderness the tug of a fork unfurled its patiently braised roulade into silken threads.

This throwback luncheonette at Greenwich and South Eighth Streets is Italian red-gravy cooking at its homiest, a passion project of family recipes steeped in Vince Termini Sr.'s big steam kettles in the back of the Termini family’s legendary bakery across the street. Food is served with little pretense; complimentary glasses of “burgundy” wine are poured from a jug by manager Anna Maria Di Gregorio.