Dell'Anima falls in the category of L'Artusi, Scarpetta, and Spasso of high end Italian restaurants that are sweeping the West Village. As many of you probably know, I have a love/hate relationship with Italian food. I mean I love Italian food (who doesn't?), but I have this mentality that I shouldn't be paying $20 for pasta. So when Lav told me she was meeting a friend at Dell'Anima and that I should join them, I was excited to give it a try because I've heard great things about it but unsure if the food would actually be mind blowing.
We started off sharing the heirloom tomato salad with ricotta, plums, walnuts, citrus zest, and saba ($15) and the roasted summer squash bruschette ($5). I was super excited for the salad because I love heirloom tomatoes but Lav had mentioned that she had it last time and it was just ok and unfortunately, it was just ok again. It was underseasoned and tasted a bit bland. Don't get me wrong, I love my food to taste clean and simple, but it could have used a pinch of salt or some basil to kick it up a notch. And there wasn't enough ricotta with the dish. The summer squash bruschette was more of a spread and they gave us 4 beautifully crusty toasted pieces of bread to go with it. It was creamy but still had some small chunks of squash. I would have loved to have tried a few more other spreads instead of the salad.
When it came time to order our mains, I thought I remembered really liking pappardelle pasta, so I got the pappardelle integrale with oyster mushrooms, scallion, pecorino romano ($17) while Lav and Aarti both got the bucatini alla arrabbitata with calabrian chilies, tomato, parmesan breadcrumbs ($16). While I did really like my pasta (clearly since I demolished the whole thing), I didn't love it. I did like the thick, long ribbon shape of the pasta but I kind of wished it came in more separate strands like a spaghetti or fettiucini. It was a bit too oily for me and I've come to realize that I really like pastas with tomato sauces/ragu better. This pasta was dressed with just oil and most of the flavor came from the mushrooms (of which there was a lot of, which I really appreciated) but I just missed the combination of tomato with pasta. This was confirmed when I had a bite of Lav's pasta (for those of you who are curious bucatini is like spaghetti but with a hollow inside) and it was delicious and very spicy. So mental note for me next time, stick with bolognese or ragu sauce next time. I do want to give a shout out that our waitress was super nice and very knowledgeable about the menu and wine list (she helped us pick out an amazing bottle of rose). Dell'Anima also has a meatless Monday special and even though I'm a meat lover, I would definitely come back to give it a try. Total bill: $54/pp with tax and tip and 1 bottle of wine.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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