Ah, Eataly. It has probably been one of the most talked and blogged about openings this year. I decided to wait a while before going since I had heard that it gets pretty crowded. Nancy and I decided to get there early so that we could avoid standing and get a seat at one of the restaurants. There are 4 restaurants in the complex: a seafood restaurant, a veggie restaurant, a pizza and pasta restaurant. But the confusing thing is there are a bunch of other standing room only eating places. This place tries to do too much in the space it's given, even though the space is pretty huge. It's got a market, coffee bar, dessert area, and then shove in a bunch of restaurants and stands and you are really at a loss of where to go.
We had originally decided to go to the seafood restaurant, but after reading the menu I wasn't really feeling it. So we went to the veggie place, Le Verdure instead. The menu was a bunch of cold and hot dishes that were entirely made of vegetables. We split the special bruchetta (it had king, oyster and other types of mushrooms for $15), the eggplant salad ($14) and the acorn squash ($17). The bruchetta were pretty large pieces and it came topped with the mushroom mix and sauteed onions. The was pretty good, but I thought some of the mushrooms were a bit overcooked and could have been more tender. The eggplant salad came with a arugula salad and capers. The eggplant was pretty skinny and not very meaty. I've had much better and fattier eggplant in thai restaurants. But I did really like the arugula salad, it was seasoned and dressed very well. Next came the warm acorn squash with black lentils and balsamic vinegar. This dish was described as hearty and I would agreed. I've never had acorn squash and it while it tasted like squash, it did have a very meaty fall feel to it. The lentils were small and looked exactly like the capers on the other dish, but they were a good compliment to the squash. All in all, the meal was fine but when you think about how I spent $30 on 3 dishes of vegetables. We then stopped to get some dessert and split a run/chocolate cake ($5.80). It was good, but could have used more rum and for $6, should have been much bigger. Eataly is definitely a beautiful space and I'm sure if I was a connoisseur of specialty Italian produce, I might like it more but in general I got the feeling that it's all about being unnecessarily expensive. I'm glad to cross it off my list, but will unlikely come back to the sit down restaurants. Some of the standing only places looked fun, but if the prices are as outrageous as the sit down restaurants, I'd rather get my Italian food in old school Williamsburg.
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