Dining Brief (or not so brief): Insieme

I love family birthdays. Even when the person whose birthday we are celebrating isn’t me, I still love to plan a good birthday celebration. Why do I love birthdays so much? They are a wonderful excuse to go out and have a good meal. This past weekend my dad and I got together to take my mother out for her birthday (she is still young and beautiful) and had to pick a restaurant. After consulting my list, I decided that we would take my mother to Insieme in the theater district.

I picked Insieme for several reasons: cold weather makes me crave Italian food, I wanted to go to a restaurant that we hadn’t been to yet, I wanted to support the theater district dining scene that has been hit hard in recent weeks, and I had read really nice
things about the restaurant.

Without going into too much detail, I’d like to add Insieme to my list of restaurants that I would recommend to friends. The food was very good, out of the 10 + dishes I tasted, every single one was good at worst and some were really good. The pumpkin risotto was a brilliant bright orange and was creamy, light and slightly sweet with the crumbled amaretti adding a nice crunch. I also really enjoyed my delicious fritto misto which were delightfully light and extremely savory at the same time. I also thought the pasta e fagioli was impeccably prepared and delicious for what is really a simple dish.

The concept behind Insieme is a blend of modern and traditional takes on Italian cuisine. It is this approach that makes the restaurant so interesting to me. On one side of the menu there are very innovative dishes and interesting combinations and flavor profiles that are part of what make dining out so much fun—you get to eat food that you presumably wouldn’t normally be making yourself. The other half of the menu is rooted in traditional Italian food, simple, but impeccably prepared. While some might think that the restaurant has an identity crisis, I firmly disagree. This might be true if you couldn’t create a seamless dining experience by combining options from both sides of the menu, but I thought my meal had a nice flow with dishes, that despite varying levels of complexity, went very well together.

In addition to the meal, I also thought the service almost entirely spot on. Not only did we walk in the door to a warm greeting from Chef Marco Canora (it’s always nice to see the chef in the house) but our meal was well paced and we were treated to several complementary dishes. The one very noticeable lack in service was the lack of explanation when the dishes were served. Our waiters brought our plates to the tables but didn’t really explain what was on them. At times it wasn’t hard to remember all the details of the menu, but I think it’s a bit too much to expect diners to remember every detail of the lamb or guinea hen in four preparations that they had ordered more than an hour before.

In the end however, our meal at Insieme was really an excellent one. We all left full and happy and I think my mom really enjoyed her birthday.