Thursday 15 January 2009

Babbo. What's all the fuss about?



Our day of grazing, donuts, truffled egg toast, burger and pizza slice, set us up nicely for what turned out to be one of my most disappointing meals ever, not just of the trip.
The reservation process itself is not as bad as El Bulli or the Fat Duck and probably aided by the time difference, but still fickle enough to make it one of the most desired reservations in NYC after M.Ko. After the initial elation of securing a reservation, came the dilemma of what to order, and after much research I had the chosen few picked out.

It started off promisingly. Our table was decent, it was not too noisy. However I got the distinct impression they thought us younger and gaucher than we were, maybe there for a special occasion with not that much money to spend. Maybe this was due to the fact we only ordered 3 dishes between the two of us, but when you don't usually eat pasta, 2 out of 3 is quite a lot of carbs. However, whatever the reason the service polite though it was seemed cursory and we felt like we were no where special.

We shared the sweetbreads which were too large for my liking,


I prefer smaller nuggets which are crispy on the outside. We then had the rock shrimp with spicy calabrese salami.



but I thought the sausage was over-cooked and hard. The goose liver ravioli was disappointing,



as the filling to pasta ratio favoured the pasta not the filling.

HI summed it up 'I just can't get that excited about paying for someone else to almost cook me pasta'. We left underwhelmed and more than a bit confused about what all the fuss was about.

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