First time for Babbo

DMR and I recently celebrated our wedding anniversary with a dinner at Babbo. Exactly one month out at 10 AM, I began calling their notorious reservation line. After about 50 redials, I got through! The only seatings available were for 5:45 and 10:30 PM, neither of which perfect but at least we got through. I opted for the early reservation.

We were seated upstairs, where everything was oxy-clean white. The brightness was enhanced by the light coming through the skylight. Early on, there were more servers and employees than diners which made me nervous at first, but they were hardly obtrusive. I had been waiting for this day for a long time. I studied the menu, read post after post on Chowhound and asked questions of friends who had eaten there.

Soon after being seated at our table, our server presented us with an amuse bouche of chickpea tapenade crostini. Yum, although there was a bit of pit on my piece. As Dan popped the last piece of bread into his mouth, a server appeared and placed a new piece on his plate.



While I drink wine, I really don't know anything about it. The wine list at Babbo is massive, but the sommelier did a nice job of guiding us through it and pointing out various options at different price points. We got a very modest bottle that was about $30 and turned out to be perfectly fine. It didn't hurt that the label had a cute little red dog on it! I swear I had no idea. I love that they decanted it and also put a little metal tray under the bottle to prevent drips from hitting the tablecloth.



To begin with, we ordered the grilled octopus and Armandino’s Salumi. The octopus was super tender with bits of char marks that offered up some additional smokiness. It was served atop borlotti (similar to kidney beans) and basil, with a garnish of watermelon radish, chive and drizzling of limoncello vinaigrette. The plate was also a knockout visually. The salumi platter consisted of lamb proscuitto and hot sopressata, and two hunks of grilled bread. The lamb proscuitto was interesting, but not my favorite as it was a little gamey and I'm not the biggest lamb fan. But I really wanted to try Armandino's wares. The sopressata, on the other hand, I could have eaten all day long. Sopressata is such a magical meat!




Here's where all my research came in handy. Most everyone will agree that the secondis are very good. However, the consensus seemed to be that if you were going to get one thing, you get the pasta. So that's what we did. I had also read that if you tell your server you're sharing, they'll actually bring the meal out in two portions, which is what they did. Funny, I'm not a lamb person at all, but we opted for another lamb dish, the Mint Love Letters as well as the Beef Cheek Ravioli, which made Dan scrunch up his face even though he had no idea what a beef cheek is and even though I told him the meat would not be recognizable at all and that it would be delicious.




The love letters were rectangular packets of al dente pasta filled with a pea puree and topped with tomato based sauce and spicy lamb sausage. The ravioli followed and it was as rich and decadent a pasta dish you could get. The sauce, made of the liver, was flecked with bits of black truffle. I haven't had truffles much, but each time I can't get over their texture, which I love. It's dense and soft and hard and delicate all at once. We also ordered a side of Babbo Greens, which turned out to be escarole that day. There was a lot of escarole on that plate.



How do people eat appetizers and primis and secondis? Before our pastas arrived, I wondered out loud if we had ordered enough food. By beef cheek ravioli time, I was really getting stuffed! Even at half a portion each, it was a lot of food. Still, we ordered two desserts, the ricotta cheesecake with strawberries and balsamic vinegar and the pistachio and chocolate semifreddo.




The cheesecake was yummy - creamy but light and I've never come across a plate of strawberries, balsamic and fresh whipped cream that I did not like. The semifreddo, which had a similar texture, only cold, was dynamite, worthy of plate-licking, which we did not do. But something tells me the folks at Babbo would be ok with it.

Dinner at Craftsteak

Craftsteak is not exactly a restaurant on my to-eat-at list, but when big brother is footing the bill, how do I say no? In fact, I might even like Tom Colicchio. He seems like a pompous tool on Top Chef, but he doesn't irk me in the way that most celebrity chefs do. Plus, I love 'Wichcraft.

Craftsteak is super sleek and housed in a cavernous space. Before you can ponder a guess as to how much Colicchio and his investors must be paying in rent, you realize that you are going to help him make his rent in a very big way. Maybe I just don't have enough experience in fine (or should I say trendy?) dining but holy shit, this place was stupid expensive. I don't even want to know how much they were charging for a bottle of water. The servers kept filling our glasses over and over without hesitation. We probably had two full bottles' worth of water left in our glasses by meal's end. Were the french fries fried in rendered foie gras and sprinkled with salt from the tears of Hawaiian virgins because I had a hard time figuring out how else they could justify serving us a bowl of soggy, cold potatoes for $10. There were nice touches, like the rolls served in cast iron pans but for a table of 8 you think they would have brought out more than one dish of butter - and with two small pats at that! Ditto for the small crock of liver pate with pickled vegetables. For our table of eight, the waiter brought out one portion of this.

We started off with a grand seafood platter, which had some of the tastiest raw clams I've ever had. They were so cold and clean tasting. Give Craftsteak a point there, and another one for the oysters. Again, delicious. But again the dish was grossly overpriced. For $120 the platter consisted of a dish of lobster salad, a small portion of calamari salad, as well as another plate of crudo which I can't remember. There were also an assortment of clams and oysters - maybe 12-18 pieces total. Let's say there were 18 pieces of shellfish, at a higher end of the spectrum price of $3 a piece , that's $54. Even if you say the lobster salad was $25 (the price of your standard New York lobster roll, which contains about the same amount of meat), that's still leaving $40 for a squid salad and couple small pieces of raw fish? What the fuck?

I don't know, throughout the entire meal, I just couldn't get over the price of it all and it definitely factored into my enjoyment of the meal. Don't get me wrong, the two things in life I would shell out tons of money for without hesitation are good seats to a baseball game and food. But I want that money to be reflected in the food, not in the lighting, decor and leather for ridiculously oversized banquettes.

The steaks were fine, though lukewarm like much of the food that was served, as were most of the sides (the onion rings and potato gratin were my favorites). In addition to the soggy fries, the escarole was a big disappointment. I was confounded by the kitchen's choice to serve greens that have not been cut into smaller pieces with a serving spoon, rather than a fork.

To drink I had a Smuttynose Hanami Ale which was totally a new, strange taste for me. I did really enjoy it's crispness and tartness. With your check, Craftsteak sends you home with a chocolate chip brioche muffin, which DMR and I enjoyed for breakfast the next day. But unless they send you home with a rebate offer, I can't imagine ever coming home from Craftsteak feeling fully satisfied.