Bar Stuzzichini Visted3/22/2011 2.75 Forks

Bar Stuzzichini  928 Broadway, (between 21st St & 22nd St), New York, NY 10010

 So I didn't really have plans to end up at Bar Stuzzichini on a random Tuesday night but I happened to be visiting my friend Lav and it was right around her apartment.  I had heard about this place but had never really had a huge desire to try it out since I generally never really love going out for Italian (although some of the places I've been to lately have been changing my mind). 


We were both pretty exhausted and weren't looking for a huge meal, so I got the Orecchiette pasta ($17) and Lav got the fried artichokes ($8) and the eggplant croquettes ($8).  Our waiter kind of gave us this look of "Are you seriously not ordering more food?" and he kind of also gave us a similar look when we wanted to split a small carafe of wine ($13).  So I was kind of annoyed by that, mostly because the restaurant was kind of empty so he shouldn't have been so irritated considering he was still getting business from us on a slow day.  The food actually came out shockingly fast.  Probably less than 10 minutes after we ordered. 

The two appetizers that Lav got were tiny.  Now I know they are just appetizers, but there were only 2 small croquettes and there couldn't have been more than 5 tiny artichokes.  But despite that, both of these dishes were quite tasty and have a lot of flavor to them.  Meanwhile, my pasta dish was actually a pretty decent size  considering how small the appetizers were.  I was excited to get the orecchiette because I had it at Porsena and it was pretty good there.  This pasta dish could not compare to that one at all.  The pasta kind of tasted dry and it could have come from a box.  It didn't taste home made or fresh.  Even though I know this type of pasta doesn't come with sauce, there was definitely something missing from this dish.  I will say that the cauliflower was actually really good in this dish and I almost would have preferred to just have a bowl full of it instead. After our meal, our waiter kept telling us how amazing their dessert special was.  It was a cheesecake made with ricotta cheese and he said everyone was ordering it.  At first we were leaning towards the tiramisu but opted for this instead.  That was a mistake.  While it was good, it really tasted like a sweet egg omelet and not a creamy cheesecake.  So that move definitely put our waiter in the doghouse.  Something about him just made me feel like he was looking down at us because we didn't get a ton of food.  But lo and behold, for at little amount of food our total till was $78!  How the hell did that happen (well, the 2 carafes of white wine is what happened)  Next time, we are going to Shack Shake across the street.