Bianca is one of those super cute adorable restaurants that I've walked past tons of times on Bleecker Street, but had never actually eaten at. So when Lav and I were looking for a place to go on a nice Friday afternoon, I suggested that we finally check this place out. We got there at 5:30pm and we were literally the only people there. What's cute about this place is that they have the doors open, so that even though there's no outdoor patio, we were exposed to the nice outdoors. It was nice for a while but since it's on a street as busy as Bleecker and Bowery, it's not actually a very quiet and peaceful for very long - there were tons of ambulances, speeding cars and honking that it was kind of harsh on the ears after a while.
The actual decor of the restaurant is definitely charming. It looks like the inside of an Italian Grandma's house with lots of cuteness abound. The menu is classic home-made Italian food and what was shocking about the menu was how affordable the prices were compared to the plethora of high-end, expensive Italian places in the city. Although I usually poo-poo those types of expensive Italian places, there are some dishes at those places like I Sodi, Scarpetta, or L'Apicio that are absolutely worth the price of entry. I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that nothing on this menu was more than $15 and so I was ready to order anything on menu without feeling guilty. We started with the fresh mozzarella and tomatoes ($12) and the lasagnette di verdure ($8.50) - we originally wanted to get the artichoke slices with parmigiano but they were out of it. I was a little annoyed by that because we were literally the first people in the restaurant (so they couldn't have sold out of it) and we had ordered wine already, so for the waitress to not tell us that they were out of until we actually ordered kind of bothered me. I was most excited for the mozzarella dish but wasn't really all that. It was fresh but it didn't taste like the creamy burrata type of cheese that I usually look for at restaurants. It was like the kind of mozzarella that I would get at my local cheese shop. The tomatoes were red and ripe but for some reason they were cut as wedges and not slices, which made it difficult to eat with the cheese. The tomatoes were fresh but again, not mind blowing and also seemed like the kind I could get at my local supermarket. Luckily, the lasagnette was fantastic and definitely not like something I could get at a supermarket. It's basically a lasagna made with strips of eggplant, zucchini, and tomato and incredibly delicious in a home-made way. It was definitely the best dish of the night. For my main entree, I got the tagliatelle alla Bolognese ($9.50) and Lav got the spaghetti al pomodoro ($9.50). Usually what blows my mind at those higher priced Italian places is the fresh pasta. While the pasta here was good, it didn't quite have that fresh home-made taste that I was hoping for. Lav commented that she thought her pasta was a bit too al dente and when I tried it, I agreed that it could have been cooked for a bit longer. Both of our pasta were drowning in pasta sauce, which normally doesn't bother me too much because I always rather have more sauce than less but this was almost too much sauce. To be clear, I did enjoy my pasta and for the price point, I definitely can't complain about it. But it's one of those dishes that makes me think that paying for pasta isn't always worth it because it tasted like a kind of pasta I could make at home. Even though I was pretty full, I still opted to have dessert. The couple next to us had the tiramisu and they mentioned that it was just ok, so that led us to order the tortino ($6.50) instead. The tortino was a chocolate mousse cake with a large helping of whip cream on the side. It was a solid standard mousse that wasn't too sweet or overly chocolate-ly, so it worked for me but for someone who is a chocolate fiend, probably isn't enough for them.
As we were about to leave I noticed how packed it was and filled with lots of couples on dates - I can totally see why people would come here on a date. The food here is solid and you can have a pretty great affordable meal but know that it's definitely not on the same level of some of the other Italian places mentioned above. Note, it's cash only. Total bill: $48/pp with tax, tip and bottle of wine
Photo Credit: Yelp
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