Ahh, Babbo. It's one of the quintessential New York Italian restaurants that everyone talks about. It used to be (and still is to some extent) one of the hardest reservations to get in New York City. You used to have to call ahead months in advance as soon as their phone lines opened in hopes that you could get one of their coveted seats. But now in this day in age of technology, you can actually book a reservation on Opentable. But it was still much to my surprise that I actually found a reservation one a day Tuesday for that upcoming Saturday. Granted it was at 5:30pm, but still I was totally shocked and had to double check that it was the real Babbo and not another restaurant that happened to have a similar name.
I was even more thrilled to secure the reservation because it was to celebrate Aarti's birthday and I was having a hard time finding a special place for her, but what better place to celebrate than Babbo? It's located on a beautiful street in the West Village and it's got a very unassuming exterior. Once inside, it's got a very old school New York restaurant feel and despite being in the West Village where almost every restaurant is pretty tiny, they actually had a very nice, bright and airy upstairs seating area - which is where we sat. The menu is divided up into the tasting menu and the a la carte menu. I was dying to try the pasta tasting menu but the whole table has to do it and upon looking at other people who were doing it, it was a lot of food. So we opted to just go a la carte and try out a bunch of different things. We started with the classic caprese salad ($18), got side orders of the rapini ($10), the Babbo greens ($10), while Aarti got the Bucatini ($20), and Will and I split the Chianti stained pappardelle ($23) and the mint love letters ($20). The caprese salad was exactly what you thought it would be - served with heirloom tomatoes and extremely fresh moist mozzarella di bufala. It's the perfect summer "salad" and it was done just right here. Next came the pastas and the side dishes. At first when we got the Babbo greens (and forgive me I can't remember what kind of greens they were but they were more of a light watery green), we asked the waiter which of the green dishes this was and he casually said the rapini. Two seconds later the rapini dish comes out and he was like "Uh- opps, I guess I was wrong about that!". That's totally fine but I kind of expected that at a place like Babbo the waitstaff would be a bit more educated in the dishes. He did a fine job when we were asking him questions about the menu while we were ordering so it was a bit weird that when the dishes actually came out that he seemed a bit flustered. Rapini is basically the same as brocolini and it was served with roasted garlic while the Babbo greens were served with roasted shallots. The consensus was the rapini was the better green of the two. As for the pasta, I didn't get to try Aarti's bucatini but she mentioned that she was very happy with it. I started with the pappardelle which was indeed very Chianti stained - it was like a deep purple ribbon pasta and served with wild boar ragu. It was a pretty thick and heavy dish and I'm glad that I split it with someone else. I did think that the pasta was a wee bit overcooked but overall it was much more of a good pasta for a cold winter day rather than a summery July day. The mint lover letters were essentially thin ravioli like squares filled with a mint spicy lamb sausage filling. It was definitely quite minty but not in an overpowering way. I generally am not a huge of pocket like pasta because there's usually so few of them and they aren't as filling but since I was cutting this dish with the pappardelle, it wasn't a huge deal here. It was definitely a unique dish and a nice summery pasta dish since it's not very heavy (doesn't come with a sauce on it) but it is still packed with lots of flavor.
Since we were celebrating a birthday, the dessert course was very important. We ended up ordering 3 different ones and unfortunately the only ones I can remember now was the olive oil cake. There was a chocolate cake like dessert and another fruit based dessert that we all agreed was our favorite of the night. Sorry that I can't be more descriptive - this is what happens when I write a review almost 2 weeks later!
All in all, it was a very nice experience and as a New Yorker I'm glad to say that I finally ate at Babbo. It's definitely a New York classic and with so many high end Italian options, I can see why it's still a popular choice with both tourists and locals - although I do think there are a bunch of other places that give it a run for its money (I'm looking at you I Sodi and my soon to be review Maialino). But if anyone else wants to go and try the pasta tasting menu, give me a call! Total bill: $260 for 3 people with tax tip and some wine
Photo Credit: Yelp
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