If you didn't think Danny Meyer could do it again, you were wrong. The man who brought us everything from Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, Blue Smoke, Maialino, and of course Shake Shack recently opened up Marta in the Martha Washington Hotel and as usual, it's spot on. While I had heard great things about it, I had also read that it was hard to get a reservation and people were waiting forever for a table, so I kind of filed it away as a place to check out later after all the hype had died down. But I happened to be at the hotel for a happy hour with some former work friends but I'm at the age where I can't go to a happy hour with no food anymore, so I left early in search of food. As Borami and I were walking out of the hotel bar, we stopped by Marta just to inquire about the wait time. Mind you this was 7pm on a Tuesday, but the place was still jammed packed. But just our lucky 2 seats opened up at the bar and we snagged them right away.
As we hungrily stared at the menu, the couple next to us were chowing down on these enormous looking pork ribs ($25). We immediately decided that we wanted to have that as well but I felt guilty that we weren't also ordering a pizza since that was something they were known for here, so we ended up getting both the ribs and the cavolini pizza ($17). The cavolini came with Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, pickled chili, and parmigiano (it was a white pizza - there is a whole section of pizza with sauce too). The pizza crust was paper thin but the ingredients on top were fresh and delicious. We got this particular pizza because we thought it sounded the healthiest with all the vegetables on it and while I can't say I felt healthy from eating it - it was a fantastic light pizza that I really enjoyed. But the main attraction that I was waiting for was the herb rubbed pork ribs. There were 4 ribs and they were like giant dinosaur bones. It looked like we would never finish it but we polished them off rather quickly. The meat was juicy and the herbs fragrant. The meat fell off the bone pretty easily although Borami mentioned that she did have some more fatty pieces on her ribs than what she would normally like. But it was the perfect dish to have after a few cocktails and glasses of wine.
Luckily, since we were seated at the bar, we got a glimpse into the giant open kitchen and it was fun watching all the chefs at work. One of them started chatting us up and asked what did we get, what did we like, etc - I later founded out that it was Nick Anderer, who is not only the executive chef at Marta but also at Maialino and that he also worked at Gramercy Tavern and Babbo before - so he really knows how to make some damn good food. He was incredibly nice and I appreciated that seemed really interested in our opinion of the food. Shockingly, we managed to save room for dessert and we got the olive oil affogato ($7) which was olive oil, honeycomb candy, vanilla gelato, kumquat and blood orange. It was a nice refreshing dessert after the heavy pieces of meat we just had.
All in all, I really enjoyed my dinner and experience there. But of course, Danny Meyer doesn't often go wrong with what he creates (with maybe the exception of North End Grill). I would definitely come back and try all of the other dishes we wanted to get but couldn't find room for: scallops, meatballs, any of the red pizzas with meat on it, lamb shoulder and all of the sides. Total bill: $34/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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