This review may seem a bit harsh but in retrospect, I expect a lot more from a Mario Batali restaurant especially when Lupa and Babbo continue to be excellent mainstays of NYC. It might be that the restaurant space at the Maritime Hotel just has bad ju-ju. In my time of living in NYC, it's undergone so many changes that I could never keep up with it.
The brunch menu has a mix of brunch-y food (re: egg dishes) and lunch-y food (re: pasta). It's always a hard choice to pick between the two type of meals but I went with the Nonna's fried egg with bottarga and ricotta ($16) and a side of sausage ($6) while Lav got two eggs any style ($15) and Lisa got the Tonnarelli Primavera ($23). Honestly, to have a standard "2 eggs any style" dish at a nice Italian restaurant like this seems like kind of a cop out. That's something I expect at a diner or IHOP but to have it at a place like this and charege $15 for it (it only comes with potatoes and toast) makes it seem like they were trying to fill the menu with another egg dish but couldn't think of any.
My meal started with a bug in my water so maybe that's what threw me off for the rest of the meal. I didn't really know what to expect from my dish but when it came out it was kind of underwhelming. It was almost like a frittata-like dish with fish roe and ricotta cheese mixed in it. Only I didn't feel like I tasted a lot of the ricotta - it felt like I was just eating a really flat somewhat boring omelette that didn't have a lot of ingredients in it. Thank god I had the side of sausage to fill me up because otherwise, I would have been super hungry afterwards. The sausage itself was fine - they were in a small link formation and didn't quite taste like they were homemade but they weren't terrible either. I didn't try anyone's food but it all looked very basic and less an impressive as well.
I will say that the waiter was really nice and they let us sit at the table way past when we finished our meal to chat and catch up, but then again there wasn't a huge line of people trying to get it. Perhaps dinner is a better choice but I can't whole heartedly endorse this place for brunch given all the other places in the city that do a much better job of it.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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