While this is not the first time I've eaten on the UWS, this is the first time in over a year that I have ventured up there. As much as I bitch and moan to other people when they complain about coming to Brooklyn, I've often done as much complaining when people mention the UWS or UES. But in all honesty, getting up to the UWS only took 30-35 minutes. I can't believe how easy it was. The reason I went up there was to see the 4th of July fireworks at a friend's place, so we decided it would be easiest to grab dinner up there too.
Julie recommend Barcibo which was right across the street from her place. It was a super cute wine and Italian small plates restaurant and luckily it was also open on the holiday. We ordered a bunch of small plates and split them, which is a lot of fun when you have a group of 3. 3 is small enough to comfortably share but big enough to order a lot of different dishes. We got 3 different kinds of crostinis: the soppressata, gorgonzola and honey, the proscuitto buffalo mozzarella and pesto, and the burrata, roasted tomato and basil ($15 for 3). We also ordered the risotti with wild mushroom, parmigiana, and olio di tartufo ($18), and the meatball crositini with fontina ($16). The crositinis were all delicious: the bread was thin, toasty on the outside (so that it was strong enough to hold all the food but it did make it a bit difficult to cut 3 ways) but soft enough that it didn't cut the roof of your mouth. At first it didn't seem like the soppressata one had honey or gorgonzola but after you bit into it, you could taste all of the ingredients in one bite. I guess they were just hidden under the large pieces of soppressata. The proscuitto one was also great, I mean how can you go wrong with thinly sliced proscuitto and soft buffalo mozzarella? The same can be said for burrata. I don't think I've ever had anything bad when burrata is involved. This crostini had 1 large wet piece of burrata and then it was covered with a few slices of really well roasted tomatoes (they were super sweet) and basil. My one complaint is that there was only 1 of each crostini. For $5/crostini, it would have been nice to have at least 2 pieces. Next came the risotti and the meatball crostini. Unlike the other crostinis we had, the star here really was the meatball. It was 1 HUGE meatball cut in half served on top of a crostini that frankly was totally unnecessary. I'm not really sure why it was even on the plate. The actual meatball was fabulous and had great flavor and spices to it. The tomato sauce on top of it was also delicious and I kept pouring the sauce on my third of the meatball. The risotti (it's the same thing as a risotto) was super super rich and creamy but what I really loved were the mushrooms in it. They were so meaty, firm and were almost raw, which I love. There's nothing worse than soft old mushrooms in a dish. You could really taste the parmigiana in the dish also. I'm super glad we split this dish because it would have been just way too much (and super unhealthy) for 1 person to consume.
You'd think after all this food that we would be full. But no, so we ordered the sweet sausage, broccoli rabe and gigante beans ($18) as well. This was not what I thought. When I think sweet sausage I imagine huge Chicago style sausages, but these were pretty thin and small sausages. But don't like the size fool you! They were great and it was probably better that it wasn't some huge meat platter because by the end of this dish, we were definitely all overly full. The gigante beans were indeed gigantic. I have never seen beans like this. They are like lima beans on steroids. But they had a nice soft texture and the flavor tasted a bit like it had been simmering in chicken broth.
The service here was great, our waitress was super friendly and really helpful in picking dishes and drinks for us. While I still don't see myself going to the UWS a lot, I can now definitely see why people like living up there and I see lots more restaurants reasons to come back up here! Total bill: $52 with tip and tax and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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