Babbo or Bust?

Maybe it was rigmarole of getting a reservation: our first available table is exactly one month from today, here’s your reservation code, sorry our day-manager made a mistake and you actually can’t have your original reservation, here’s another one, you wanted one before 11?, sorry we can only do 5:15. (Actually I was lucky and scored a Saturday at 8, but the first four steps were actually like that…)
But we finally got to Babbo at 8:10 on Saturday night not knowing what to expect but very excited about pork bellies and beef cheeks and goose livers, oh my, and were directed to a table in the back. I’d read and heard magnificent things about Babbo: the pasta is so original, no one has done anything quite like this with Italian food before, the prices are very reasonable, the service is impeccable. Some of those things were true, but the question of whether or not it would be worth a month’s wait was still very much up in the air.
The space was beautifully decorated—high ceilings, nicely spaced tables, and a beautiful second floor dining room with a large glass skylight in the middle of the room. More than just an impressive dining room, though, the service is involved in an intricate dance with one another and with their customers; within the first five minutes we had three people come to our table to take a wine order or make sure we were okay with out or bring us water. They have their timing down nicely, although it can be a bit overwhelming to be approached by four different people when you haven’t even gotten a chance to look at the menu yet. Before we’d gotten a chance to order our wine, we were brought an amuse bouche, “compliments of the chef.” It was a warm curried chickpea spread on top of toast, and it was fine. There was a hint of sweetness to the chickpeas, they were a bit firmer than usual, so complimented the crispy toast nicely. But the whole thing was a bit bland, and unimpressive. Not a great start, but we were both willing to put it aside because our waitress was very nice and seemed surprisingly down to earth, grounded in reality and aware that, as two 21-year-olds, we needed a different kind of service than the typical patron.
The appetizer we ordered—grilled octopus with spicy limoncello vinaigrette—was also quite tasty. It was cooked well, so it was tender and not chewy or tough as it can easily get, and the vinaigrette cut the somewhat creamy flavor of the octopus with a nice tang and touch of hotness. Then came the pasta course, which was by far the stand out portion of the meal. I had the beef cheek ravioli with crushed goose liver and black truffles, which was not only a fabulous blend of flavors but also so strikingly original that it begged the question of exactly how these ingredients were put together. Bridget had a squid ink spaghetti with rock shrimp, spicy salami calabrese and green chiles, which was also delicious. While I’ve never had rock shrimp before, it is easy to tell why it is a nicer compliment to a pasta dish like this one: the taste is much smoother and you don’t run the risk of having that chalky texture that can significantly bring down any dish, especially pasta. The pairing of the shrimp with the salami and green chiles was perfectly balanced, and left room for all the flavors to develop without overpowering each other.
So, all told, the actual food portion of the meal was great, and very reasonably priced. (For an appetizer, 2 main courses and a bottle of wine the total was only $100.) It was the whole production surrounding the experience that left a somewhat flat taste in my mouth. If this were still a neighborhood ristorante and enoteca as it touts itself, then I would wholeheartedly suggest a trip there. But it’s become so much more than that since it first opened in 1998 that I think it may have actually lost some of its luster. It is no longer a friendly Italian restaurant where you can taste really good food in a comfortable friendly, but a hyped up eatery that screams that you are sitting some place ultra chic and hip. So, while it is certainly worth the money, it may not actually be worth the wait.

Still, you should probably make beef cheek ravioli with crushed goose livers, not war.
And now, to bed.