212.253.8840
A tasting menu debacle. Went here with with all three spouses and a boisterous expat living in London. Other wife was convinced that the multiple awards meant something. We decided to get the tasting menu and make a night of it. There must have been something lost in translation, as they kept bringing us regular sized portions, of different items, and then expecting us to pass the plates and share.
At first it was okay, but once you've tried everything and realized that one or two of the items may or may not contain dog, you want to stick with one thing. You inevitably end up competing with the other diners for the one tasty dish (the ceviche was miraculous). By the end of it, I had a black eye.
Trattoria Rino--Midtown West
212.307.0666
I'm never trusting Yelp again. Rather, I'm going to start the new fad, beloved nine, of stating quite clearly that I've been yelped. We saw Book of Mormon (not as good as you've been led to believe, FYI,--but this is a restaurant review damn it!) and needed to get the in-laws to a relatively inexpensive and menu-neutral post theater dinner. Yelped Italian food and this is what we got:
A glorified pizza parlor with gimmicky wall hangings and a bunch of wanna-be Gambino's playing make believe mafioso restaurateurs. Food sucked. Service Atrocious. They had this weird dude in a fedora and trench coat chain smoking cigarettes outside that would occasionally come inside and ask how everyone was doing. There was a fat, greased, mustacheoud oddball that must have been the owner, getting up from his table of losers every ten minutes to come and ask how everything was doing.
Hey Rocko, you know what? Everything thing is going poorly. Your team of Ecuadorians are currently hauling your garbage through the dining room, your wine is a magnum of grape juice and antifreeze, and your risotto is par cooked crap. Go smoke another cigarette and while your at it continue your effective yelp campaign as that is the only way I could fathom you getting three stars.
Pelligrino's--Little Italy
212.226.3177
Now on the other side of that coin is Pelligrino, a typical red-sauce joint down in little Italy. I know that everyone rolls their eyes when they think little Italy, assuming the worst: the fleecing of would-be diners who are mostly from areas of the country that don't have little Italies (let alone Italians). But I must say that this place was perfect for my purposes. Firstly, I was with my family. It had enough gimmick to satisfy their tourist hungers, but enough class to satisfy my NY snobbery.
The food was authentic red-sauce Italian. Cooked well but with no real surprises. Not great, not bad, but cooked as though it's been cooked a million times before. And the pricing? I'm the wine buyer at my company, and I must say we were knocking down Antinori Toscana ( a decent middle of the road wine) bottle after bottle and it was inexpensive enough to do just that and still stick my older brother with the tab.
