Barbuto--Manhattan

212.924.9700


Ahhhh...beloved nine.  How nice it is to have back to back posts about well known restaurants in Manhattan.  It's been too long.  No more of this slumming it at destinations around the States that pretend to understand what it's like to be in NY.  The hustling, bustling, pretentiousness of it all.  The young 20-something staff.  The smell.  The ambient ambulance sirens and taxi cab horns.  And let's not forget that bars close at 4am.

Iconman, shut the fuck up.  How was the food?  Well, it was okay.  Firstly, this place was seemingly packed when the four horsemen arrived (we are the old, very old banquet team of yesteryear) and were told that despite the preponderance of available seating the wait was two hours.  No problem, we know this drill.  We will simply stand at the most inconvenient place for the servers, clogging their flow, ordering bottle after bottle of over-priced Pinot Grigio.  Ipso facto twenty minutes later we were given a seat.  Service was brisk and professional. They even allowed me to bastardize one of their pasta dishes into a Carbonara (which it kind of already was but nonetheless this is a big plus for me.  If you can tweak a dish to make someone happy you should.  Right?).  Food:

Meatballs--A
Broccoli appetizer--B+
Barratta--B
Calamari--B+

Entree's--we all had pastas:

Shrimp pasta to el dante
My carbonara not enough something or other.
Other pasta--who cares I'm too drunk.  Seriously, that's a quote from my scribbles.

Cheeseplate--needed honey.

Tiramisu--lights out

As you can tell, when back in the city I revert back to my old ways.  The dinner was fine.  Was it $200 a head fine?  Unclear.  Also unclear is how many bottles of wine we consumed from start to finish.  It was definitely a place where you take your parents when you've finally come in to your own and want to impress them by paying for dinner.  There were quite a few of those people sitting at the bar waiting for four over-the-hill derelicts to finally vacate their seats.  Little did they know that sitting at the bar like a civilized person does no good.