I normally don't hang out in Midtown East ever except to go to Bloomingdales, but it is a convenient area to meet a friend of mine who lived in Roosevelt Island so I made an exception to have dinner up there. I generally find this area too corporate, soul-less and not very interesting. My opinion didn't change too much after visiting this area on Friday. Serafina is located next to Tao and across the street from Lavo, if that gives you any indication of the types of restaurants and places in the area. Luckily, Serafina is not one of these painfully trendy loud restaurants. It's actually pretty small and has a cute, mom and pop feel to it. The menu here is straight up traditional Italian ranging from a variety of antipasti to pasta to secondi dishes.
Since we were with my friend's energetic 1-year old daughter, we kind of had to eat quickly and get in and out of there in record time. If you've ever eaten with a toddler, you know what I mean. While I would have loved to get an appetizer and have a leisurely meal, it wasn't really in the cards for us. So we each ordered a pasta, I got the fettuccine casareccie alla bolognese ($16.75) and Lily got the bucatini alla matriciana ($16) and that was it (although I did have to indulge and get a glass of wine). The pasta came our rather quickly and smelled delicious. My pasta was a pretty standard fettuccine pasta with a hearty beef ragout. The noodles were al dente and the sauce was pretty meaty and the right amount for the pasta size. I wasn't overly impressed with the dish but it was pretty solid and hit the spot at the moment. I didn't try the bucatini but it also looked quite tasty.
While the food prices were fine, I found the prices for the wine to be rather expensive for the type of place it was. Most of them were over $12, which is a bit high for the ambience and type of restaurant this is. The service was also a bit slow and I got this feeling that they were kind of annoyed that we had a toddler with us. They did try to be nice and had a high chair to accommodate us, but I think they picked up on the vibe that we weren't there to really hang out and order tons of food so they didn't really engage with us. While I did find the food to be pretty decent, it wasn't enough to really overcome the awful location of it. I would say that if you happen to be in the neighborhood, it's worth having a meal there but it's definitely not a place that you should go out of your way for as there are just too many other amazing Italian places around the city in much better locations. Total bill: $30/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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