Ino Helped Usher In Simpler, Freer Fare In a Facebook post on Sunday, "ino announced that it had closed. When the shoebox-shaped and nearly shoebox-size panini shop opened on Bedford Street 15 years ago, there was nothing quite like it in New York, a restaurant that kept things simple and kept prices low, serving flavorful food in a room that was just adorable enough that you could decide, midmeal, that maybe the two of you squeezed into the counter were there on a date, and not just grabbing a bite. You have to fire up the Wayback Machine to better understand how "ino helped change how this city eats. Fifteen years ago, New York was a bistro town. There was the old guard: Blue Ribbon, Le Gamin, Jules, Lucky Strike, Raoul's and a dozen others. Then in 1997, a newcomer opened in SoHo named Balthazar, which raised the stakes with its set direction and unlisted reservation line. Balthazar was white-hot: it had perfectly distressed mirrors, fresh and crusty bread, and although it was impossible to get a table unless you knew somebody who knew somebody, you could always go at midnight and eat at the bar. Soon, New York was lousy with bistros. It was a good era if you wanted a kir, steak frites, escargot, frisée lardon, profiteroles. Authenticity, or some version of it, was the point. Everybody was pressing butter into little ramekins to be served at room temperature, changing the paper covering the tablecloths before serving dessert. Honestly, it was really fun. The restaurants were lively, intimate, sexy. So what if you could recite the menu before you set foot in the door? But if you were a young chef with a measure of vision and creativity, you were stuck either making onion soup and beet salad with goat cheese. Or you worked on the line executing the vision and creativity of an older chef in Midtown or TriBeCa. Prune hadn't yet opened. Neither had Diner. Brooklyn didn't have much of a food scene outside the restaurant row on Smith Street, which was anchored by Patois, a bistro. If you went to Williamsburg, it was to go to a party or to go dancing, not to eat. This was the landscape when Jason and Jennifer Denton opened "ino on a quiet street in the West Village. The kitchen in the back was the size of a D.J. booth and used the technology of induction burners, which was novel at the time: it was a paninoteca that looked as if it belonged in New York rather than being shipped, tile by mirrored tile, from Milan. The culinary vocabulary was Italian, but it wasn't sepia-toned and sentimental. Instead, there was a focus on ingredients at a time when, in New York at least, few people cared. It had simple food done well, and sometimes you encountered flavors that weren't lifted out of the songbook. I still have a 13-year-old memory of sharing a shredded duck sandwich with sweet relish, a combination that is about as authentically Italian as a functioning parliament. You could go to "ino to get something familiar (prosciutto and cheese will never get old), but you could also try something new. Ino was a casual joint with integrity, an easygoing place where you could eat well as long as you didn't mind the wait. Today, we take this combination for granted, and expect all kitchens to put some effort into sourcing and display a little creativity no matter how limited the resources. That we do owes a little bit to "ino.