Inside Tavola NYC: Why This Chef Still Gives a Damn

After 37 years, Nick Accardi is still doing things the hard way. And here's why it matters.There's a pizza oven in the middle of Hell's Kitchen that weighs 7,000 pounds.It was carved from volcanic clay harvested at the base of Mount Vesuvius, shipped across the Atlantic, and somehow squeezed into a Manhattan storefront that spent the previous 119 years as an Italian grocery store, one that, by the way, was literally torn apart by a bitter family feud so public and so messy that even Anthony Bourdain weighed in on it.Getting that oven to New York wasn't cheap. Installing it wasn't easy. And maintaining the kind of wood-fired heat that cooks a Neapolitan pizza in 90 seconds? That's a daily commitment most restaurateurs would laugh at before turning on their gas range and calling it a day.But Nicola Accardi isn't most restaurateurs.And Tavola, his rustic Italian trattoria at 488 9th Avenue, isn't most restaurants.This is a story about rebellion. Not the loud, look-at-me kind that announces itself with press releases and Instagram-friendly design. This is quiet resistance: the kind that shows up every day at 5 a.m. to hand-roll pasta. The kind that imports ancient Sicilian wheat flour when the...