In a former life, 432 East Ninth St. was home to a tough New York bar. Today, thanks to one of the city's faster-than-a-speeding-bullet neighborhood transformations, the far East Village has evolved from dangerous to stylish, and No. 432 is home to I Coppi, a cozy Tuscan trattoria where a warm greeting, heady aromas, and the robust tastes of the region await.

Much of the credit for what J. Walman described on WEVD as "the most charming Tuscan restaurant to open in Manhattan this year" goes to Lorella Innocenti, a native of Tuscany who worked front-of-house at Le Madri, Orso, Joe Allen, and I Tre Merli, and her husband, John Brennan, a cabinetmaker by trade. Innocenti longed for a place of her own to showcase the food she grew up eating. Brennan fell in love with the region through his wife, and shared her vision for an authentic, welcoming Tuscan restaurant. Together they opened I Coppi-she managing the front, and he transforming the interior into a warm, intimate space. They recruited Innocenti's mother, Alberta, to cook, and her father, Lido, to bake Tuscan bread.

But after getting the place on its feet, Mamma and Babbo returned to Italy, and these days, credit for the "worthy little Tuscan trattoria," as Ruth Reichl phrased it in The New York Times, belongs in no small part to Sara Jenkins, daughter of renowned cookbook author Nancy Harmon Jenkins. Sara spent a good bit of her childhood in Tuscany, but her discerning palate didn't automatically translate into a culinary career. To hone her skills, she spent two and a-half years working in restaurants in Florence, and two years in Boston under Todd English at Figs. These days, "she perfumes I Coppi with homey aromas of the Tuscan hillside," Bob Lape wrote in Crain's, and in a city hungry for truly good Italian food, she doesn't lack for an appreciative audience. The Wine Enthusiast praised the "brilliant pizzas [that] come straight from the brick oven, piping hot and blasting with garlic." Walman went for the "knockout polenta." Douglas Hunt of the New York Law Journal loved the "immensely appealing, lemon-perfumed, meltingly tender veal stew." John Mariani added up any number of "splendid" dishes in his Virtual Gourmet newsletter to conclude, "I Coppi is one of those little finds that make a restaurant critic and locals of the far Lower East Side rejoice."