Red Sauce Rebellion Serves Up Lakeside Italian

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Photo by Caitlin Abrams

Table at Red Sauce Rebellion

Excelsior is a lakeside town, which means that it booms all summer long with boaters and beach-goers. During winter? Not a lot of boom. 

For a long time, the corner of Water and Main streets, right in the middle of town, held a drugstore and a nondescript Chinese restaurant. After a total renovation in 2016, it became Victor’s on Water, an Italian restaurant that lost its big-name chef early on and never quite recovered. When Victor’s closed last year, locals were concerned about whom to bring in. One large empty lot near the lake has been earmarked for a hotel since the ’90s—which is actually a tribute to the spirit of the place. Excelsior has a proud vision of itself as independent and unique. Applebee’s need not apply. 

While a few bigger local outfits were being courted for the old Victor’s space, the opportunity ultimately went to a guy four doors down. Chef Eli Wollenzien, who opened the eatery Coalition in 2014, snapped up the vacant corner when other offers lagged. 

What luck! Wollenzien has been feeding people in town for a while now, and he believes he understands what they want. “We brought in Cynthia O’Connor to help us redesign the space,” he told me in December. “We needed some color and warmth.” They shed the white tablecloths and a sea of stemware from the former restaurant, and added more bench seating, kicky red wallpaper, casual wood tabletops, and a bright-blue tile to the back bar. 

Welcome to Red Sauce Rebellion: a more approachable take on Italian, satisfying to the head and the heart. You don’t have to think too hard about what a dish might be. You don’t have to Google Translate the menu to know what you’re ordering. Yet each plate comes with a bit of an upgrade to your expectations. The restaurant motto that comes to mind here on Water Street: Underpromise and overdeliver. 

What does that mean? Fritto misto, usually a jumble of fried seafood and some veg, showed up crisp and light, with shrimp surrounded by crunchy-fried giardiniera (that is, pickled vegetables) delivering a tangy kick. I have a sincere love for linguini and clams, especially with shell. The firm noodles in this recipe just loll in a buttery wine sauce, which plays against salty pancetta and chili flakes. 

The signature pizza, or Rebel Pie, comes with a biscuit crust baked in a cast-iron skillet. It is a heavy, whomping expression of deep dish that lands on your table with intent. Wollenzien isn’t phoning it in with family Italian here, but he’s also not serving difficult food. The red sauce looks thick with tomato chunks. It tastes a bit sweeter and more plummy than those austerely acidic red sauces one often finds where red sauce exists as a garnish. Here it is obviously, and rightly, the star. The payoff? A brick of lasagna, already rich with snowy ricotta, seems almost decadent when enrobed with the meaty version of this red sauce. 

I appreciate the tap wine, known as House Sauce. It’s an easy Italian table wine that you can order for $7 a glass, or $30 for a 1-liter carafe. This summer, they’ll open a patio in the back and you can bet those carafes will appear on every table. What’s more friendly than that? 

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