Parm Visited 4/7/2012 4 Forks

Parm 248 Mulberry St., (between Spring St & Prince St), New York, NY 10012

Lav and I have had a love/hate relationship with Parm for the past 4 months.  We tried to go there twice for dinner and each time we were told it would be almost a two hour wait.  So each time we left dejected and annoyed.  However, this time around we found ourselves right by Parm at 5pm and decided to give it another go.  I should have known that a place that is owned by Torrisi (a place that I seriously love) would have had a very particular seating situation.  Basically, they have a limited menu during the day and if you want to have access to the full menu, they don't start serving until 6pm.  The trick is that they start to take names for the 6pm seating at 5:45pm.  So get your butt there around 5:45pm to be one of the first 7-8 names on the list or else be relegated to waiting another hour.  The restaurant is so small on the inside that once they seat the first group of people, the tables don't turn over for another hour or so (similar to my experience at Mary's on Friday) and hence the constantly long wait.  

So 3rd times a charm and we were seated at 6:10pm.  The full menu itself is actually more limiting than I thought.  They have a bunch of appetizers (garlic bread, pizza knots, etc), vegetable side dishes, main entrees that come in either roll, hero or platter form, and then they have daily specials.  The special for the night was veal parm and the waitress could not stop talking about it, but it sounded like it was a bit too much for me.  Lav and I started with the B&G Poppers ($6), garlic bread  ($7) and I got the chicken parm platter with ziti ($17).  The B&G poppers are jalapeno peppers stuffed with cheese and then lightly battered and fried and served with aoli mayo.  I'm not a huge fan of jalapeno peppers but these were pretty good and they weren't too spicy but there was still a serious kick to it.  The garlic bread was perfectly toasted and it came with ricotta cheese/marinara sauce side.  It wasn't too heavy on the garlic but it was still deliciously crispy.  Next came the main dish and I was totally surprised that it was normally portioned.  I was totally expecting it to be this monstrous dish but there were 2 small-medium lightly breaded pieces of chicken breast and a small square of ziti.  I haven't had chicken parm in years and this one made me want to put it into rotation.  The chicken breasts were super juicy despite being breaded and covered in sauce and cheese.  I appreciated the fact that you could actually taste the chicken and wasn't overwhelmed by too much sauce.  I overheard the waitress telling the next table that the ziti was seared on all sides to get this even crunchiness to it and I could totally see what she was talking about.  The ziti was a great side dish to the parm and while it wasn't mind blowing, it was a very tasty dish.  I also tried Lav's eggplant parm and it was super hearty and the eggplant was cooked perfectly (not undercooked or too soggy as they tend to absorb a lot of moisture).  To be honest, the kicker was the dessert.  We got the zeppole filled with chocolate hazelnut sauce ($7).  It's basically a donut hole but they were fresh and right out of the oven and just oozing with goodness.  They were covered with sugar and even as someone who doesn't like chocolate, I loved them.  I would have also been interested in trying the version filled with jelly also (clearly just a jelly donut).  

For all the hoopla, I'm glad I finally got to eat here.  The seating situation does make it slightly infuriating and I think you can order most of the dishes as take-out so that might be a less mind numbing experience.   I could see myself coming here and ordering a hero/sandwich to go next time instead of trying to battle the crowds.  Total bill: $63/pp with tip, tax and 2 drinks each

Photo Credit: Yelp