Babbo

(The pictures of the lamb's tongue vinaigrette and the beef cheek ravioli are from other people's flickr sets, as anyone who knows me knows, I don't like taking pictures inside of restaurants)


The first weekend of summer is now behind us and I spent it celebrating the way I celebrate everything these days—by eating. On Thursday night I went to Babbo for the first time and was extremely pleased with the meal. Between the two of us we tried the lamb’s tongue vinaigrette with black truffles, Armandino’s salumi, the goat cheese tortellini with fennel pollen and dried orange, beef cheek ravioli with crushed squab liver and black truffles, spicy two minute calamari, rabbit with peas pancetta and carrot vinaigrette and we split the saffron risotto (There wasn’t much room left in our bellies.) Everything we had was excellent and starting dinner at 6 (we walked in) wasn’t too difficult to deal with. The only problem we had was trying to figure out what to order; everything on the menu looked so good that it was difficult to come to a decision. In the end however, I was happy with everything we ordered even though I probably don’t need to eat as much next time.

I am definitely going back to Babbo at some point but I doubt I’ll try to make a reservation. If you don’t mind waiting a bit it’s relatively easy to walk in and the prices, which are not absurdly high make it a fairly accessible restaurant for regular dining. It almost doesn’t seem worth it go through the routine of calling a month ahead of time only to have to wait through busy signals and not get a time that you want. Next time I go I’m going to sit at the bar, eat some spectacular pasta, drink some Italian wine and try some more of the desserts.