If you take pleasure in pork, the Zagat Restaurant Guide has reviewed an Upper West Side gourmet Italian market and café where you can purchase Tuscan cured and cooked meats - called "salumi" instead of "cold cuts" to bring home or enjoy in-house with a glass of wine.

Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto
283 Amsterdam Avenue
1-212-877-4800
www.salumeriarosi.com

According to the guide, this salumeria/enoteca from Chef Cesare Casella slices up choice salumi from Italian purveyor Parmacotto and sells it retail at a deli counter or from an antipasti menu.

"I don't want to use the word 'deli,' but it's a new way, the Italian deli," says Casella. "They come here to stop three or four times a week. To do something, sit down and have dinner, have a glass of wine, or to buy food before they go home after the office."

Patrons praise the wallet-friendly vinos while design fans recognize the stylish digs enhanced with bas-relief sculptures of sausages by Italian Oscar-winning set designer Dante Ferretti.

"When I saw them put in the word 'Italy' with the black mirror wall - oh, I love this place," says Casella.

Casella grew up working in a salumeria in Tuscany and dreamed of opening a similar space in New York. From pork sausage mortadella to 36-month aged proscuitto de Parma, he says the most important thing is to know your product and how to slice it. Salumeria Rosi has what Casella calls the "Ferrari" of machines, a manual Berkel slicer.

"Now when you slice, it's so incredible," says Casella. "The blade is going slow, it's so much difference to have the latest model versus vintage."

Vegetarians take note - Salumeria Rosi is not just a meat market. There are also fine Italian cheeses and pestos and a wonderful selection of wine.

But Casella's passion for his product is obvious.

"I love sliced salami," he says.

Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto is not yet rated in the Zagat Guide but prices are listed as moderate.