My Life in Meals

You’ve probably heard about all you can drink brunches, but an all you can drink dinner?!

Welcome to Piola in Union Square, a large Italian eatery where on Wednesday nights ladies can have unlimited house wine (red or white) with any entrée after 8pm.  As you can imagine it’s full of groups of girls from NYU (which was my friends and I just a few years ago), as well as those long graduated (which is us now!).

They have an enormous selection of specialty pizzas, as well as a more limited menu of salads and pastas. The food is consistently good, not life changing or anything - but you’re obviously not coming here for the food!

On our last visit here, we ordered two pizzas and a pasta to share between three of us. I’ve tried a number of their pizzas over the years and I have never gotten a bad one. The Penne Rosate pasta (pictured above), with smoked salmon, tomato sauce, cream and parsley is my favorite pasta on the menu, but the gnocchi is very good as well.

Mareverde Pizza - Shrimp, brie cheese, arugola, tomato sauce and mozzarella (pictured above).

Ortomisto Pizza - Fresh tomatoes, eggplant, spinach, sweet peppers, zucchini, broccoli, tomato sauce and mozzarella (pictured above).

Piola runs all sorts of other gimmicky nightly specials like all you can eat gnocchi night on the 29^th of each month, or all you can eat pizza night on Sunday evenings. Check out all their specials and promotions here.

I highly recommend you plan your next ladies night here! It gets pretty packed, so make a reservation for a guaranteed table with minimal amount of wait time!

Piola
48 East 12th Street
New York, NY 10003
(212) 777-7781
Website
Price: $$

Stone Street is one of the best thing to happen to Manhattan’s Financial District. It’s a quaint little historic street with cobble stone pathways, fully lined with restaurants and outdoor seating galore. You would never guess that only a block or so over you’d be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of Wall St. Adrienne’s Pizzabar, is one of my favorite restaurants on Stone St., and serves up some awesome “old fashioned” pizza pies. They offer both rectangular pan pie style pizzas, as well as round Neapolitan style pizzas.

This time we went with the round style pies and order the Romana Pizza Pie topped with arugula and prosciutto and the Calabrese Pizza Pie with broccoli rabe and sausage (we also added mushrooms).

Not only is the pizza delicious (in my top 5 for sure, although not comparative to number one - Motorino), but it’s also dog friendly. The waiters were very nice and brought bowls of water for all the pups dining at the restaurant, including ours!

I think I (very) slightly prefer the rectangular pan pizza’s I have had here on other occasions, but both styles are worth trying!

Adrienne’s Pizzzabar
54 Stone Street
New York, NY 10005
(212) 248-3838
Website
Price - $$

Mototino has the best pizza in NYC, according to the New York Times. That’s a really big claim to make considering the multitudes of amazing pizza joints here in New York, and I knew they wouldn’t just make a statement like that without some level of certainty. After reading this article last year, I of course had to check it out for myself (and I have been going back ever since!). I have to agree with the Times on this one, this really is the best pizza in NYC.

Motorino has two locations, one in the East Village and one in Williamsburg. The Brooklyn location is much larger, and the pizza slightly better in my opinion. They serve up high-end Neapolitan style pizza’s - thin crusts, perfectly charred, but airy and chewy at the same time.

This is the first time I have gone for brunch, and I was eager to try the Pizza Al’ Uovo, the specialty brunch pie with cow milk mozzarella, chili oil, basil, pecorino and farm fried eggs. Wow wow wow!!! Of course I loved the chili oil, amazing touch!!! This was pretty messy to eat but SO worth it.

We also had my other two favorites, the Soppressata Piccante made with, mozzarella, spicy soppressata, garlic and oregano and the Brussels Sprout & Pancetta pizza, made with mozzarella, garlic and pecorino cheese. Brussels sprout on a pizza? Who would have thought that would be good! But this sauce-less pie really works! The brussels sprouts get perfectly charred in the oven and are a great compliment to the pancetta.

Motorino East Village
349 East 12th Street
New York, NY 10003

Motorino Brooklyn - CLOSED
319 Graham Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Website
Price: $$-$$$

I truthfully only wanted to go to Donatella because celebrity chef and owner Donatella Arpaia built a faboush blinged out pizza oven and I just had to check it out (pictured below, but for a better one click here). Someday, I hope to have one exactly like this in my massive chefs kitchen (hey, a girl can dream….). The pizza unfortunately was average. I have been to D-Bar before, Apaia’s smaller outpost of Donatella literally around the block, which boasts the same exact menu and I distinctly remember that dining experience to be much better. With that said, a restaurant that doesn’t have consistency is a no-go in my books.

We didn’t have a reservation so we had to sit at a communal table with others, even though there were clearly other tables open.  Fine, whatever - on to the food. We started with the Calamari Fritti which is served with a lemon-bottarga aioli. It was nothing special - if you want to have really good calamari check out the calamari I wrote about here at the Collective.

For the pizza’s we ordered the Margherita with san marzano tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, pecorino and basil and the Cappellacio, which consisted of charred & marinated mushrooms, smoked buffalo mozzarella, pecorino and basil. The margherita was fine by me, but the mushroom pizza was nearly inedible. The mushrooms had a consistency I have never had before, they were chewy like rubber!

As far is Donatella goes- it was all glitz and no glamour!

Donatella
184 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10011
(212) 493-5150  ‎
Website
Price: $$$

I recently went for an anniversary dinner to Asellina in the Gansevoort Park Hotel. This is a perfect date night or special occasion spot, the decor and ambiance were absolutely beautiful (see photos here), and the food equally excellent!

We started with the Wood-Fired Meatballs with cannellini beans, culatello and fontina cheese. The meatballs are definitely a must have on the menu - they were beyond delicious. The sauce was different from your usual marinara, it was much lighter and creamier. Alongside the meatballs, we ordered the Artisanal Italian Cured Meats plate, which was so fresh and has such high quality cuts of meat that you really feel like you were sitting in a restaurant in Sardinia, the native homeland of the chef at Asellina.

My fiance has visited Asellina before and raved about a pizza with a fried egg on top. Unfortunately when we saw the menu it was not there! The waiter informed us that the pizza we were referring to was only a special they sometimes have and we were extremely disappointed. Instead, we ordered Wild Mushroom Pizza with stracchino cheese and spring onions. Next time, I would suggest skipping the pizza, as it didn’t really live up to the other specialty joints like the Co.’s or Motorinos of the city.

We finished of with the Pappardelle with wild boar, red wine and fresh nutmeg. The homemade pasta was delicious, but the ragu was a bit salty. It  reminded me of a very similar pasta dish I wrote about here at Mario Batali’s Eataly, which was equally delicious, if not better.

Asselina
420 Park Ave South
New York, New York 10016
(212) 317-2908
Website
Price: $$$-$$$$

I love eating pizza, but hate the calories that are associated with it! Below is my recipe for a healthy, quick and easy homemade pizza that take less then 15 minutes to prepare and cook! You can make this with literally any veggies or protein you have on hand in your fridge. If you don’t have whole wheat pitas, you can also make this on whole wheat english muffins.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole wheat pita
• 2 mushrooms, chopped
• 1 tablespoons chopped red onions
• 4-5 baby spinach leaves
• 1 spicy Italian sausage, removed from casing
• 1/4 cup jar tomato sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• Part skim low fat mozzarella cheese, 3 to 4 small slices
• Jalapenos (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

1. In a small bowl, mix tomato sauce with chili powder, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper to taste.
2. In a frying pan, heat 1 teaspoon olive oil and place sausage in sizzling pan. Saute for 5-6 minutes on medium heat or until fully cooked.
   
3. Evenly spread tomato sauce on top of the whole wheat pizza. Top with spinach, and then the mushrooms, onions, and sausage. Top everything off with mozzarella cheese.
   
4. In a toaster oven, cook for about 10 minutes or until cheese becomes brown and melted. Add jalapenos if desired.