I traditionally love everything and anything Danny Meyer does - case in point, Daily Provisions is my current Achilles heel as I will eat that roast beef sandwich as often as I can. So maybe I had really high unfair expectation for Martina. To be fair, it was described as more of a fast casual restaurant and shouldn't really be compared to a Marta or Maialino but it was still a bit more underwhelming than my other Union Square Hospitality experiences.
Anuja, Amy and I decided to have a pizza crawl and Martina was first on our stop and Emily in the West Village as our 2nd stop. Anuja got a great Gilt City deal where we could order up to $50 of food, which at a fast casual place is actually a lot of food. The menu has a good line up of appetizers, salads and pizzas - they have a red pie section and white pie section. The pizzas are 10 inch individual size thin crust Roman style pies, so don't expect a traditional NY slice. We got the suppli ($4), arugula salad ($6), a margherita (red) pizza with mushroom ($9) and the ortolana ($10) (white) pizza. The suppli is a fried risotto ball stuffed with mozzarella and it was as yummy as it sounds. I could have eaten entire bag of them. I mean what could be better than fried goodness and cheese? The arugula salad was fairly standard fare with lemon juice, olive oil, and cheese. It was a bit plain but given that we were planning on eating all day it felt important to get some greens in.
As for the pizzas, they were good but compared to our next stop Emily's, it didn't stack up. I like a thin crust pizza but it's just never as satisfying as a thicker crust pizza. The margherita was a standard red sauce pizza but don't get me wrong, it was still tasty just not mouth watering. The white pizza had kale, mozzarella, and pecorino cheese so a fun twist to a veggie pizza. Unfortunately, similar to a white sauce pasta, there's just something that's not the same with a white pizza pie compared to a red pie. They're always fine but I want to like it more than I do.
Overall it was a fun experience and if you're looking for fast casual, Martina checks all the boxes. I guess for me, pizza isn't a fast casual kind of place for me. It's a sit down, red sauce and chill with beer kind of meal for me.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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