Babbo

There is a reason why people do not make late dinner plans on a Monday night, regardless of how hot the restaurant is and how perfect the food is. The thing is, after a long day easing into the workweek, especially when you have to wake up at 5am the next day to make it into the office come Tuesday, you really do not have the mood to eat multiple courses and enjoy yourself like you would on Friday night. So under that premise, I must say that my meal at Babbo was less than I expected.
Of all the restaurants I've ever visited, Babbo, by virtue of its innovative Italian menu, modest prices and the fame of its owner Mario Batali, is by far the most difficult to get into. To get a table, be prepared to call one month in advance, at the strike of 10am, and be prepared to press redial multiple times. Rosie was probably put on hold for about 30 mins before she scored a table for 4 on a Monday night for Yanru's belated birthday dinner. That evening, we met in the restaurant, and huddled in one corner of the extremely crowded bar area, cramped full with diners without reservations (another way to score a seat without having to go through the trouble of making the calls). We were dismayed to find ourselves having to wait an extra 15-20 mins for the table before us to clear out, given it was 915 pm, we've been up since 5am for some of us, and were starving. The hostess though, did try to offer some help by bringing glasses of water to us while we waited.
Once we were seated, things did improve. For one, the upper floor where we were seated was much mellower than the circus downstairs, and the townhouse setting was urbane and warm. Water glasses were filled and chewy Italian peasant bread brought to us while we contemplated the menu, finally settling for 2 appetizers to share and a pasta each. Appetizers came fairly swiftly, an artfully presented plate of fresh salted sardines served with a cool caramelized fennel salad that I could not get enough of, and an exotic sounding Lamb's Tongue Vinaigrette with morel mushrooms and a 3 minute egg that was more cooked than poached. Yanru swooned over the unique flavors of the dish, although the rest of us were slightly more ambivalent and lamb's tongue, well tastes like beef tongue but gamier, but nothing ventured, nothing gain!
The pastas took some time to arrive but when they did, they were very good. I really enjoyed my black tangle of squid ink spaghetti, cooked al dente and tossed with fresh rock shrimp and spicy pancetta. I loved that the pancetta did not overwhelm the more subtle sweetness of the shrimp and the slivers of green chile provided extra heat. Rosie's spaghetti with tomato sauce, lobster and chives took me by surprise. While my dining companions were not too impressed by the ordinariness of the tomato sauce, I loved the introduction of subtly garlicky chives- which I only associate with chinese pork dumplings- enhancing the natural sweetness of the lobster flesh. It would have been even better if the tomato sauce was less sweet and more acidic. I went home thinking about the dish and ways to recreate it, given its simplicity. Yanru's beef cheek ravioli is probably the most complicated, with the winy braised beef cheeks shredded and stuffed into large packets and served with trace amounts of truffle oil. Very tasty but more a fall dish than summer one. Fennie's orecchiette was perhaps the most disappointing as it was more chewy than the rest of the pastas and bordered on undercooked. The sausage and broccoli rabe combination also played with sweet, bitter and spicy flavors but seemed more traditional and thus less impressive.
We skipped dessert as it was 11pm by the time we finished our entrees, and no one (except me) was in the mood to linger over coffee and dessert. What a waste though, because the dessert menu and our neighbors' plates looked fantastic. Oh well, I'll just have to come back another time.
When friends asked me about my dinner at Babbo, I told them that the food was good, but maybe not worth the effort of making endless calls and taking ridiculous timeslots for a meal (915 was great compared to the 1030 or 11 pm times they've offered for weekends). However, despite all that, I may find myself calling one of these days, 30 days in advance of a weekend night and eat again, this time not having to fear missing my bedtime, for the desserts that I've missed and the great pasta that is to be eaten.

Babbo
110 Waverly Place

Del Posto Enoteca

I went to dinner at Del Posto last night, but instead of shelling out hundreds, I had a very tasty and affordable meal at its casual dining corner, the Enoteca. For $45, one can partake in 5 courses spanning the entire spectrum of the menu, from antipasti down to the dolci. And with about a half dozen choices per course, you're getting none of that Restaurant Week crap of getting to choose between only dry chicken breast or salmon.

Dinner starts with a basket of about 5-6 different house-made breads, served with a pat of sweet butter and another pat of lardo, unadulterated pork lard perfumed with rosemary, utterly spreadable but a little too rich for me. Germaine and her friend Charmaine selected the luxurious beef carpaccio, simply dressed with oil, pepper, salt and melted mozzarella while I had a luscious grilled octopus. We then had 2 perfectly al-dente pastas, the famous bucatini alla Amatriciana, a thick spaghetti with a small hole running through the strand, slick with a spicy, intense tomato sauce. The other pasta was little ears of orcchiette in a peppery chard base. Both featured the smoky goodness of pancetta and a lot of heat. And as if we needed more pig, Germaine and I picked the roasted pork loin as our secondi, served just a little pink with a sweet applesauce to cut through the fat. The cod that Charmaine got was perfectly cooked, but overall the very big plates of entrees paled in comparison to the pastas.

The desserts were generally good, ranging from the very rich chocolate pudding to the tart and refreshing passionfruit sorbet in my 4-sorbet plate, but we were so full that they did not taste quite as impressive as they sounded on paper. Another reason why the desserts lost some points was due to the fact that some of the desserts such as the chocolate cake and the tart could be found sitting on the table next to where we were seated. While I know intellectually that most restaurant desserts are pre-made, its something else to actually watch the panettone dry out in front of you.

The corner of the enoteca was elegant and cozy, a little too tight but perfect for couples and small groups. Unfortunately none of my pictures came out right due to the dimness of the room. Service was very gracious, and despite spending much less than the big rollers in the main room, we were not treated like second class citizens. My request to pack my entree home was taken without the slightest bit of disapproval and my pork loin met me at the coat check, where the server had thoughtfully left. For pork and pasta fiends alike, eating at Del Posto's Enoteca may be the best semi-fine dining deal in the city.

Del Posto

85 Tenth Ave (Bet 15th & 16th St)

212-497-8090

(The enoteca takes only same-day reservations, lines open at 10AM)

www.delposto.com

Otto - GelOtto & Pizza

We thought we were invincible. We had by either sheer luck or too much persistence managed to fish out a lot of kate spade goodies, in relative good shape, for very little moolah and were very pleased with ourselves. If we could pack so much shopping in such a short time, we rationalized, what's a short walk from Century 21 to the village for pizza and some oddly flavored ice cream? What's wrong with strolling in the sun, with no sunblock on a 90 degree day? We are from the tropics and therefore had a natural immunity to sweltering heat, or so we thought.
Just so you know, we did manage to get to Washington Square Park and did locate Otto. We also ate there. But the hour long walk was anything but short, and the initial excitement about trying olive oil gelato for the first time had died down somewhere between tribeca and soho. By the time we stumbled into the restaurant, thoroughly dehydrated and very sweaty at 4 pm we just wanted to crash into the chairs and be fed as quickly as possible.
It is under this premise that Ruoying and I tried the pizza and pasta at Otto, the most affordable Mario Batali-related establishment in the city. I had very inexplicably imagined the restaurant to be in a tiny and quaint cornershop, but it was pretty cavernous and comfortably dark. While it was extremely quiet at 4 pm, I can imagine it being a bustling and jam packed place during more normal dining hours. We ordered quickly and played safe on our choices. At 4pm, we really didn't need added grief if the pizza lardo (lard on bread, dad would kill to try this) didn't come up to our expectations. The server and efficient server, as if sensing our hunger (which is pretty apparent, it being 4 pm for lunch and all) served us rather quickly and plied us with bread and numerous refills of water. We tried the penne alla norma, very al dente, which is the way I like it but less to Ruoying's liking. But the eggplant was nicely done and Ruoying, normally averse to eggplant actually fought me to get to the last couple of eggplant bits on the plate. The ricotta also binded rest of the ingredients together well without being an overkill.. The pizza margherita was also very yummy with a thin crispy base. An afficionado of thick and chewy dough probably would not appreciate it so much however.
With our tummies sated and with us having sufficiently recovered from our unfortunate walk, we then contemplated our gelato choices. Pickings were mainly conventional save for the house specialty olive oil gelato. We chose that of course, as well as chocolate and the hazelnut flavors. The trio was quite a good balance, with the saltiness of the olive oil balancing the sweet nutty hazelnut flavor. The chocolate flavor was somehow less creamy and more sorbetty, and served as a palate cleanser of sorts. Oddly, I was a little disappointed by the olive oil gelato, i had imagined it to be a putrid green or yellow and tasting of solidified evoo. Silly me, Mario Batali and crew obviously have a more understated and sophisticated palate than that! After all, he is an Iron Chef..
The wine selection at Otto is enormous and given its surprising affordability, I can't wait to bring Peishan there when she's in town again =)


p.s.: I thought i saw susan sarandon while in the bathroom. She had curly hair and a nice mellow voice. I was probably mistakened, but after spotting johnny depp and spiderman in the past 2 wks, I wouldn't be surprised if it was her too... i love the cheap thrill of celeb spotting, don't you?
Otto
1 Fifth Ave (on 8th St)

Basta Pasta

In honor of Xinghong's graduation, we hit Basta Pasta for some Jap-Italian (Italianese, Jatalian) food to witness what the Japanese can do to classic Italian cuisine. While pan-asian fusion food is commonplace (foie gras wonton anyone?) and championed by many influential celebrity chefs in the city, Basta Pasta is quite the anomaly as it injects asian sensibilities into western cuisines without killing the italianness of its food. What do I mean? While you do see some Japanese ingredients in certain menu items and the portions are on the light side, most of the dishes remain true to form and very classically italian.
We started the meal with breadsticks, followed by bruschetta with a cheese spread before they finally brought out the bread basket stocked with 4 types of bread. Yup, 3 bread-related courses before the meal began in earnest. Luckily the entrees weren't too big.
I ordered spaghetti with tobiko roe and shiso leaf, the most blatantly Japanese inspired dish on the menu, and liked the buttery flavor of the sauce spiked with the slightly sharp taste of shiso. I also liked the texture of the roe with the firm pasta, although the roe for some reason was kind of sweet. I liked Gerri's spicy spaghetti dish too. The jalapeno taste was mild as you put it in your mouth but intensifies at the back of your mouth as you chew and swallow the noodles. Ruoying's roast duck was nicely rare and juicy and I liked XH's seabass too, although I can't remember too much about it. So entrees were generally well done.
Desserts were also a mix of classic Italian and Asian inspired. I liked XH's hefty slice of tiramisu , generously spiked with coffee and liqeur, a lot. Gerri's coconut panna cotta was so cool and smooth it slides right into your mouth, but we felt that the cantaloupe soup that the panna cotta was swimming in was a little too flavorful and distracted our attention from the mild coconut flavor. I had houji tea icecream, which tastes much like usual green tea icecream, but with a denser and smokier flavor.
We really liked the food and had fun watching the chefs cook in the open-concept kitchen. What we didn't really understand about the restaurant though was the space, which felt very make-shift. With the pictures on the walls and the exposed ceiling, we felt as though the restaurant space could have been an art gallery in the day and converted into the dining room in the evenings by pulling a couple of table and chairs together. Still, it was a comfortable enough room and a great meal to round off a school year.

Italian on a rainy day

black tagliatelle
Originally uploaded by hong.ruoxi.

It puked rain yesterday, all day long, so XH, Gerrie and my plans to visit Basta Pasta was shot... But we were still determined to eat pasta (well, I was), so we decided to just pick an italian restaurant as close as possible and hope for the best.
I made some searches on menupages and based on the reviews picked Roberto Passon. Hey! less than half a block away! 4 stars! ok.. that settled it...
Anyway, the food was fresh and decent but really nothing that special. They don't let you go hungry though, and the plates pretty much overflowed with food. My black tagliatelle with mussels and clams was ok. After the transcendatial arroz negro in Barcelona, I have yet to find another black squid ink stained dish that tasted as great, but tt's really not their fault. The arroz negro was really good =) XH had a very filling plate of spaghetti carbonara, while Gerrie took the prize for best dish of the night with rabbit on baked polenta. The polenta in particular was crunchy outside and creamy inside. Like a good piece of fried 萝卜糕
Alton Brown's little blurb about "polenta, grits, its the same thing" made gerrie and i very interested in getting our hands on some grits soon too =)
The three of us split a large warm banana tart for dessert, and while good, tasted too much like breakfast (banana nut loaf) for me to order it again.
Overall, the restaurant is a nice neighborhood place with some interesting things on the menu (black pasta, portuguese octopus, chicken liver), but given all things, I still prefer Maria Pia just a block further from home, because its more spacious and the servers were just a tad friendlier.

Roberto Passon
741 9th Ave (50th St)