My first meal in New York came moments after we checked into our hotel. My colleague, Todd, lives in Montreal, but has New York City for his territory. Along with our colleague, Simon, we took a quick walk up Fifth Avenue and ended up walking down 55th St. and into a little Italian restaurant called La Vineria. (see map)
Chef Andrea Giacomoni is the owner of this little quaint place in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. It's small and cozy. It would be a romantic place for dinner and it's a great place for lunch.
La Vineria (which means "The Vineyard" in Italian) has a number of wine bottles lining the walls of the place. The kitchen is open in the back and you can look in and see the chef and sous chefs preparing the meal. La Vineria features a brick oven for their signature pizzas and a number of their main entrees.
The menu for lunch was similar to the one they have for dinner. Many of the menu items are based on rural Italian dishes including fish, poultry, and wild game. The special for that day was a venison roast cut into cubes and served over potatoes and carrots, and topped with a venison sauce that was really just gravy.
We took a few minutes to look things over, but Simon declared that he had to have a caprese salad with fresh basil, tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. I said, "I'd help you eat some of that."
So we got two orders for the three of us. We could have easily gotten a third one, it was so good.
For lunch, Todd ordered the venison special, Simon ordered the Pappardelle with duck ragout and seasoned mushrooms, and I got the Pizzelle pasta with spicy Italian sausage and broccoli. We also got a basket of assorted homemade breads for us to snack on while our food was being prepared.
When our lunch was brought out about 20 minutes later, we were ready to eat. My Pizzelle and Italian sausage was wonderful. The Pizzelle were small, flat pasta shells, not like the Italian cookies most people think of when they think of Pizzelles. And the Italian sausage had a wonderful spiciness to the meat. Even with the broccoli in a red sauce, it worked.
Todd offered me a bite of his venison. I'm not big on game food, but I took a bite of one of the venison chunks. The brown sauce that went with it was very good - it had kind of a peppery taste to it. And the venison was moist and tender, but I still didn't care for the overall taste of the meat - even with the sauce.
Pappardelle pasta with the duck ragout and mushrooms was given a "thumbs up" by Simon. After he finished, he said, "That was great, but I really think I could have more of that buffalo mozzarella."
With three glasses of wine and lunch, the bill came to just over $70 bucks. My first experience of eating in New York was just what I expected - good and expensive. Todd said, "There's a lot better restaurants in this town, but I like this place. It's got a great 'homey' feel, the food is good and the service is great." But like Todd said, there's hundreds of these little Italian restaurants all throughout New York. The restaurant competition is heavy. If a restaurant wasn't good, it wouldn't be in business very long.
Well, La Vineria certainly has been here awhile and it isn't likely it will be closed six months down the line...
(Update October 2011 - Well, La Vineria probably wasn't closed six months down the line, but on my recent visit to New York I was told by my colleague, Todd, that his favorite little Italian place was, indeed, closed. Just like a number of restaurants of its type, La Vineria succumbed to the economic downturn. Too bad. It was a cool place.)
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