Locanda Verde Visited 4/9/2011 4.25 Forks

Locanda Verde 377 Greenwich St., (between Franklin St & Moore St), New York, NY 10013

There has been no other restaurant that I have wanted to try for brunch for the past couple of months than Locanda Verde.  But every time I call for a brunch reservation they don't have any openings.  However, this time Deanna was in town and they had told me that if we went really early (i.e. before 11AM), they usually can accommodate walk-ins.  So against every fiber of my body, I went to brunch in the city at 10:45AM.

I am always aghast at how many people are up and eating brunch at this hour, but Locanda Verde was definitely pretty full by then, but not too full that we had to wait for a table.  The decor of the place is gorgeous, similar to a huge, old, rustic Italian restaurant.  I had read that they were famous for their sheep's milk ricotta ($14), so we split that for the table.  I got the Uovo Modernese ($17), Deanna got the zucchini frittata ($16) and Aarti got the Al Forno ($16) and then as if we didn't have enough carbs on the table, we also split the garlic potatos ($7).  I was really torn over getting the Modernese and the Scampi and Grit because that came with polenta and I'm on such a huge polenta kick right now.  If I was with someone else who ate meat, it would have been great to get both and split them.  But since I wasn't with another meat eater, I decided to go with the dish that had hollandaise sauce.  Next time I'll bring another meat eater.

The ricotta came out first and it was an enormous amount of fresh ricotta with truffle honey and brunt orange toast. It was incredibly fresh and creamy.  I don't think we did a good job of mixing the honey with the ricotta because without the honey the ricotta was actually a bit too light.  I almost would have liked to have added a pinch of salt.  The orange toast was on its own was pretty amazing. It was toasted perfectly and you could taste the hint of orange but it wasn't overpowering.  Then out of the blue the bus boys bring out a basket of freakin delicious focaccia bread with caramelized onions in it.  It was so soft and tasty that I could have eaten the whole basket.
 
My Uovo Modernese was 2 poached eggs covered in a tomato and spinach hollandaise sauce, sitting on a bed of cotechino hash AND FREAKIN MORE BREAD.  The hash was god damn amazing and the eggs were perfectly runny.  Everything about it was simply delicious.  I used the focaccia bread to sop up all of the hash and runny egg.  I didn't try Deanna or Aarti's dish but I did notice that the frittata had fried zucchini blossoms on it which I love.  Aarti's dish looked like a baked casserole with brunt baked cheese in a round dish.  The one thing that was a slight disappointment was the garlic potatoes.  Dare I say that they were over garlic-y? They were nice and crispy but all you could taste was this over powering sense of garlic that you couldn't taste the potato.  All in all, I think I may have eaten an entire loaf of bread during the course of my meal.  I was so sad to see almost half of the ricotta left over, but it just didn't make sense to bring it home with us.  Next time I would definitely not order another side and I would try to maybe try to mix the ricotta in with my main dish.  I think it would have went pretty well with the hash and eggs.  The total bill was $35/pp which is a bit steep for brunch but in this case I actually think it was totally worth the bill.  I may finally be coming around to embracing Italian food in the city after this meal and Osteria Morini.