The location is great, slightly off the beaten path in the West Village and once you walk inside, even though the space is pretty big, it had a nice, warm and cozy feel. It kind of made me feel like I wasn't in New York anymore with it's nice brick work inside and festive holiday decorations. The hostess was very pleasant and nice despite the place being mobbed at 9pm on Friday. We were told it would be a 35 minute wait and it was actually a 35 minute wait. That usually doesn't happen in the city. They tell you 30 minutes and it ends up being like 70 minutes. So I appreciated the fact that we sat down when we were supposed to.
The menu had a lot of fabulous authentic sounding Italian dishes. It's not a cheesy Little Italy Italian type of menu and the portions were more individual sized than family style. We started with the burata cheese and roasted cherry tomatoes on the vine ($16), blistering peppers ($13) and I had the cavatelli with spicy lamb ragu and chickpeas ($19) and Aarti had the hand-rolled spaghetti with lemon and parmesan ($18). The burata was amazing (how can it not be?) and the roasted cherry tomatoes were a nice touch. I've never had roasted cherry tomatoes and by roasting them, they really brought out the sweetness in them and it was covered in a light balsamic vinaigrette. I would have liked some basil and bigger tomatoes because there just wasn't enough tomato to cheese ratio, but it was still delicious none the less. Next, the green peppers came out and even though I am usually not a "eat a whole pepper" type of person, I had had this dish at a Spanish Taps place before and LOVED them. Our waiter had told us that 1 in 10 peppers would be super hot. So you know who got that 1 super hot pepper? Not Aart, but me. I thought my whole mouth was going to explode. But besides that, the dish could have used more sea salt on it and they could have roasted them for a bit longer.
By the time our main dishes came out, I was actually kind of stuffed but I was still excited for my pasta. I haven't had cavatelli before (or at least I don't think so) and it was ok not mind blowing. I was torn between the cavatelli and the pappardelle and I now kind of wish I got the pappardelle instead. There was nothing wrong with my cavatelli at all, I just think I would have preferred a broad thick noodle. Cavatelli is a small pasta shell that's kind of shaped like a tiny hot dog buns. The spicy lamb wasn't very spicy and some of the pieces of lamb were too big and needed to be more bite sized and there wasn't too many chickpeas. But overall, it was a perfectly fine dish and did it's job in filling me up. I was just in the mood for more mind- blowing, super saucy, hit you in the face with flavor, stomach busting pasta. Sadly, we were both too full to get dessert but after looking at the menu, there wasn't anything that I was dying to try.
As we were paying the bill, we saw a couple order some super cheesy fondue type dish with mushrooms (almost like a queso fresco) that I totally want to try if I'm back. There was also a pumpkin polenta that sounded good, so there are plenty of other dishes on the menu that I think merit another visit. I also wanted to give a shout out about the cocktails. I had a berry vodka cocktail and it was one of the most delicious cocktails I've had in a while. Our total bill was $55/pp with tax and tip.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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