Taking advantage of Restaurant Week, I went for lunch at Abboccato, an all Italian restaurant located Midtown West, behind the Ziegfeld Theater. Abboccato meaning palatable in Italian, my expectations were high.
The place is fairly big with three distinctive areas. The bar:
The main dining room and a smaller dining room next to the entrance.
For restaurant week, they proposed a menu for $25 comprising an appetizer, an entree and a dessert.
As we were choosing our dishes, they brought us some Italian breads: focaccia and sticks.
They then poured some olive oil that I really like as a replacement to butter. The bread was decent.
For the appetizer, I picked the fried polenta crusted calamari. It was served with a San Marzano tomato sauce that was supposed to be spicy (it was definitely not).
I really liked it: it was crispy and the calamari not chewy. You could sometimes feel some polenta grains when biting into it.
Then I got the sweet potato ravioli.
The ravioli was perfectly made, thin and delicate, filled with a mix of sweet potato and ricotta, served with a brown butter sauce and hazelnuts. The filling was a bit too sweet and I would have liked a little less as it was overpowering the ravioli. However, the combination with brown butter was fantastic and I just wished at that point that they put more sauce.
One thing I should mention is that the lunch menu had tagliatelle instead of the ravioli printed on it as a choice for entrees, the ravioli being proposed in the price-fixe dinner. They apparently made a change that they communicated to me, but did not update their lunch prix-fixe or their computer. So, when my dish came, it was...the tagliatelle. As I was set for the ravioli, I sent it back and they were really apologetic about it, bringing my dish not too long after.
For dessert, I chose a tiramisu.
The serving in a glass hinted for a creamy one. And it was. The lady fingers were heavenly soaked in coffee and the cream quite light, but a bit bland. It was an ok tiramisu.
My lunch at Abboccato was decent; it did not wow me to the point that I would like to go back on another occasion, like I would for Tamarind or Remi. If I really wanted to eat Italian in this area, I would probably go to Circo that is located on the same block.
Enjoy (...)!
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And Remember: I Just Want To Eat!
| * Restaurant Name | |
|---|---|
| Abboccato | |
| * Overall | |
| ★★☆☆☆ | |
| * Neighborhood / Cuisine | |
| Midtown West / Italian | |
| * Street Address | |
| 136 West 55th St., New York, NY 10019 | |
| * Phone | |
| (212) 265-4000 |
