Santina has been getting a lot of buzz lately - it's no wonder because it's from the guys at Torrisi and Carbone. I had been wanting to check it out since it opened but it's been impossible to get a reservation that wasn't crazy early or late. But when Louise mentioned that she was coming to town and that we should get dinner on a Monday, I figured it was easy enough to go for the early bird dinner (5:45pm) on a school night and not look too lame.
As Louise told me, this place is definitely full of "well groomed" people - I mean, it is in the Meatpacking District and in a prime location next to the new Whitney Museum. It's got a very summer time/Miami feel to it, which is perfect for now but I wonder how it will fare once it starts to get colder. Regardless, it's a bright, sunny and cheerful spot. The menu is new school Italian and instead of them having descriptions of what the dishes are on the menu, the poor waiter proceeded to spend 15-20 minutes with us describing every single dish. I'm not kidding, every single dish. And he did this with every table. I'm not sure why they just don't add a few words to dish on the menu.
We started off with the tuna cecina and the squash carpaccio and then we split the rigatoni verde and the spaghetti blue crab. The cecina is like a very thin pancake/buckwheat crepe and then they give you this delicious mild/hot green sauce and a side bowl of raw poke-like tuna to fill the pancake with. I loved the flavor of the tuna with the green sauce and the thinness of the pancake was just right where you didn't feel like you were eating something greasy or bad for you. Next was the squash carpaccio and it was freaking amazing. It was paper thin slices of delicious yellow/orange squash, drizzled with a sweet honey-like sauce and topped with ricotta cheese and herbs. It was a perfect summer time dish. On to the pastas. I was excited for them because they have this outrageous spicy vodka rigatoni at Carbone that is amazing. The waiter did warn us before hand that the blue crab pasta could be very polarizing because its fishy but since Lou and I are from MD, we figured it wouldn't be an issue for us. And it wasn't - in fact I loved this dish. I can see how someone who isn't a fan of crab would find this dish fishy - they cook the sauce with the crab meat in it, so it's really infused in the whole dish. But I was a huge fan of this dish and the pasta itself was nicely done done and definitely tasted fresh and homemade. The rigatoni verde was also good but not as tasty as the crab one. It came with a green basil-like sauce to it and was a nice summer pasta that wasn't too heavy.
Of course, we had to end the night with dessert and got the most popular one on the menu the lemon meringa which was very similar to a lemon meringue pie only they serve you a large meringue top and then press down a lemon cream filling on top of it with a spoon. It was a great, tangy dessert and seemed fitting for the theme of the summer time theme here.
Overall, I really enjoyed the food here - even if it was a bit pricey and I'm generally not a huge fan of the MeatPacking scene in general. But it's a nice addition to the Major Food Group family of restaurants and their outdoor patio is definitely a great place to spend some down time in the summer time. Total bill: $108/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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