Bun Boy Eats NYC – BABBO – LUNCH

BABBO – LUNCH – WEST VILLAGE

May 8, 2015 5:44 am

Lunch Tasting Menu – $49

Scoring a hard-to-get reservation at a popular restaurant is usually a challenge I’m up for. I don’t mind calling exactly at 10 am, one month before my desired dining date or refreshing Opentable.com every few seconds over the course of an entire work day for new availabilities.

However, every man has his limits. After a while, it’s just humiliating. How much rejection can one person take?? I’m not going to eat dinner at 10 pm on a Monday night. I have my dignity, for Pete’s sake.

After about 6 months of trolling my Open Table app at 5 am, bleary-eyed and frustrated, I just bit the bullet.

I reserved a table for lunch with the other grandpas.

When all else fails, go for lunch. As long as they’re open for lunch. That part is important.

Once you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that your sexy meal is now more of a geriatric one, it’s actually kind of fun. Just like at dinner, where bedtime follows shortly, you’ll be drunk and napping shortly after your meal.

Welcome to old age.

Visiting a fancy restaurant for lunch is also a good way to save a few shekels.

In the case of Babbo, the lunch tasting menu ($49) was half the cost of the dinner one ($99). How economical!

We also decided on the wine pairings, which were only $35 extra (for dinner, it’s $75 pp).

We arrived at the almost brunch-ish time of 11:45 am to find only about 2 other parties in the restaurant. About 15 minutes later, the dining room was completely full. Apparently, other folks had the same idea. Cheap, impatient bastards.

The meal started with a free crostini appetizer. I don’t know if that’s what they called it but that’s what I’m calling it. After one bite, every available chickpea fell off my toast, onto the table and spread everywhere like Chinese checkers.

I glanced over at a neighboring table who had just been handed those same appetizers. I watched in delight as the exact same thing happened to her and I tried to suppress a giggle.

The wines poured with each course were about a half glass worth. I won’t go over each one cuz I have no recollection of them. One white, two reds and a sweet, dessert wine with dessert. There, that’s all your gettin’.

After the crostini, came the poached baby artichokes on the eggplant caponata. Tasty but not my favorite. I pretend to like eggplant more than I really do.

Then came the world’s smallest portion of pasta. It was delicious but I wanted 4 more portions of it. Or 10. Whatever the amount that can safely fit inside of a Chef Boyardee can. That’s how much I would have preferred.

Then came the best part of the meal, the pork tenderloin with braised fennel and blood orange. Fantastic flavors, everything was well cooked. Also on the smaller side but definitely the largest of all the dishes.

Dessert came and we were given both the olive oil cake and this tasty apple tart situation. Both really fantastic, not a single complaint. At first, it might be jarring for some to witness a bottle of olive oil being drizzled over your dessert but just get over it. It’s a healthy fat.

As an added bonus, we were given a plate of petite fours to munch on. Restaurants offer these peace offerings to apologize in advance for the horrific bill that is to come. Perhaps the sugar coma reduces ones vision, so the bill appears to be smaller.

I’m not going to lie. If someone were to hold me up at gunpoint directly after this meal, but instead of taking any money, they insisted I devour a very large cheeseburger…..I wouldn’t have fought too hard.

Sure, I could have kept playing the reservation game, found a 5 pm dinner slot on some random Tuesday. Then I would have been served double the food (for double the money) but then what would have I have to bitch and moan about??

110 Waverly Pl
New York, NY 10011
b/t N Washington Sq & Mac Dougal St in Greenwich Village
(212) 777-0303
babbonyc.com

ALL PHOTOS TAKEN WITH AN iPHONE