Pulino's Visited 2/19/2012 3.5 Forks

Pulino's 282 Bowery, New York, NY 10012

So you know that old saying, don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry? I would say that same thing for when you are looking for a place to eat.  Lav and I had an awesome time at Juvenex Day Spa for 4 hours, but we were both starving by the time we left.  We had plans to go to Parm because last time we were there it was a 2 hour wait and went to Rubirosa instead.  We figured 5:30pm on a Sunday during a long weekend wouldn't be an issue.  Um, totally wrong.  There were people pouring on to the streets waiting for a table.  One guy even stormed out and screamed "This is bullshit!" and frankly, I don't blame him.  I mean, seriously, you can't even get a table at 5:30 on a SUNDAY??!  So we decided to scrap our plans and go to Cafe Habana instead and what do you know? Freaking line too!  I mean I'm not sure if it was a bunch of tourists but I was so confused by what was going on.  Don't real New Yorkers not eat until 10pm (and I totally get the irony of me trying to eat at 6pm myself)?  So finally we decide to go to Pulino's.  Neither of us had been before and luckily, they could seat us right away.  So it was kind of like eating at the B-grade Parm (both are Italian).

We were so hungry at that point that we didn't even wait for our waiter to tell us what the specials were and yelled our order at him immediately (after hearing the other waiter tell his customers what the specials were, I kind of wish we had waited to hear our waiter out).  We got the blistered green peppers with sea salt ($9), the eggplant parm appetizer ($13), burrata pizza ($20) and the baked ziti with meatballs ($18).   The peppers were good but they were a bit overcooked and too soft.  The eggplant parm appetizer was delicious.  The eggplant was nice and soft and there was an abundance of tomato sauce and cheese.  The bread that came with the dish was a nice thick piece of garlic bread which was amazing and actually my favorite part of the dish.   The pizza was a pretty large pie and if we weren't so hungry I would say that 2 people could totally split 1 pizza with some appetizers and be fine.  The burrata pizza was good but I wasn't wow'd by it as there wasn't as much cheese as I would have liked (it was much more saucy than anything else).  Like Rubirosa, the pizza here is also thin-crusted but the pizza at Rubirosa was much better as the crust was just tastier and held up better with wet ingredients on top of it.  The baked ziti was also good but I would have liked to have had more sauce and cheese.  With some bites, I was getting just the ziti with limited sauce.

To be honest, if we had stopped our meal here, I would have given this place 3 forks.  But what put it into the 3.5 range was the dessert.  We got the s'mores sundae and it was freaking awesome.  It was vanilla and chocolate gelato, with hot fudge, graham cracker crumble and a marshmallow cream. All the ingredients on their own were great, but if you get a bite that has all of the combined, it will blow your mind.  I especially loved the marshmallow cream...it reminded me of eating marshmallow fluff out of the jar when I was a kid.   All in all, the meal was good and totally hit the spot but again, I'm not sure if my perspective would have been different if I wasn't starving and annoyed by all the lines at the other places.  Total bill $57/pp.

Photo Credit: Yelp