Immaculate Infatuation

There’s a difference between a local spot to grab a quick, convenient bowl of pasta, and pasta worth travelling for. That being said, we won’t disown our friends who live in the building upstairs and offered up Novita as a suggestion. God knows I’ve routinely eaten some slop over the years just because it was easy, but I wouldn’t recommend that slop to my friends. If you live in the neighborhood, Novita is a nice local hang with great service and reasonable food; we just wouldn’t recommend going out of your way for it.

We knew going in that Novita attracted an older, more sophisticated crowd, and as expected, we looked like preschoolers compared to the other clientele. While some of the food was certainly good enough, we were expecting more. The damage was $80 a head (with a couple glasses of wine each), unfinished plates of pasta, and six people in need of a bathroom immediately. Also, it doesn’t help their cause that BLT Prime sits in plain sight across the street. All I could think about the entire meal (except for how awesome it was when our waiter said “oct-ooo-pusss” in his amazing accent) were BLT’s holy popovers.

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On a beautiful day when Frank is on full blast it’s like the East Village’s see and be seen answer to Pastis. Everyone at Frank is feelin’ it; “it” being life. The vibe is contagious, and you really can’t escape it. That is, if you can handle people in your personal space. Frank packs ‘em in like the L Train at 8:30am on a work day. What’s that? You don’t like my elbow in your spaghetti? Sorry about that, but there’s no other place for me to put it. I promise I showered this morning.

It’s not like the East Village blew up into this crazy culinary hotspot overnight. Where leaders succeed, others follow. Frank Prisinzano opened Frank in 1998 and quickly became a leader in the E.V. food movement, blazing the tastemaker trail and building an Italian empire along the way (Lil’ Frankies, Supper). Frank has been serving hungry hipsters in this hood for years now and doing it with their own DIY “we do it our way” attitude. The food is consistently solid, though a little underwhelming at times, but you come back regardless because it’s places like this that make the East Village one of the dopest neighborhoods in the entire world.

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“Look for the red lantern,” instructs the Macao Trading Co. website. This is how you will know you have reached your destination – the Portuguese colony of Macao circa 1952, “a fugitive’s heaven from which there is no turning back.” Awesome. We’re apparently having dinner at Universal Studios tonight.

Last week, we went out on an Immaculate Infatuation blind date. A mutual friend introduced us to two food enthusiasts with whom we share similar tastes and interests, Miss Info and Heather Park. Team Infatuation suggested Macao Trading Co. for dinner based on some recent hype and the promise of an interesting “Chinese meets Portuguese” meal. A Thursday dinner went in the books and we hit the town feeling it. We met our partners in crime at the bar, hit it off immediately, and sat down at our table ready to get into some serious eating.

This review wrote itself so fast; I think I have enough material to make it a three part series. First of all, Macao is a huge scene … everyone in the house is either on an early in the game date, or starting off their night before they hit Pink Elephant. Second, the place is essentially a theme restaurant. There must have been a yard sale after the last Indiana Jones movie and the owners of Macao cleaned out every prop that Planet Hollywood didn’t already scoop up. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised to see a monkey in a shriner’s hat come out and bus the table. The food and service were right about on par with a downtown Ruby Foo’s. We ordered a lot from the menu, many of the dishes suggested by our waiter, and nearly everything was overcooked, over seasoned, and overrated. The shining stars from our meal were the chicken dumplings, and you can get five of those for a dollar a few blocks north on Canal Street. Moral of the story? Next time we let our new friends pick the restaurant.

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If you’ve ever been to the Maritime Hotel for drinks on the patio, you basically know the drill when it comes to La Bottega – everybody is way too cool, ultra Euro, and nobody seems to have a job, including the wait staff. The Maritime patio is always crazy in the summer months, and its proximity to Meatpacking and Highline action ensure that even in colder weather, La Bottega could be slinging Totino’s Pizza Rolls and still turn out a nice dinner business. There are a lot of reasons to expect mediocre food out of a place like La Bottega, but surprisingly, this Italian restaurant is far better than it needs to be. The tagliatelle bolognese is incredibly good as are the rest of their homemade pastas, and the pizzas are also a nice size and tasty. A respectable wine and beer selection makes the environment a little more tolerable, but let’s be honest – you’ll have to take La Bottega as it comes. You might as well embrace it and throw on a really tight t-shirt, some silver Pumas, and one of those Gucci fanny pack things … you know you kind of want one of those anyway.

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Oh Brooklyn. You’re so close, yet so far away. It definitely takes extra motivation to get Immaculate Infatuation to venture to BK, especially Dumbo. How anyone can live there and not go completely insane from the constant noise accompanying living under two bridges is beyond me. It makes you empathize with the troll from “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”. However, when we heard that a couple who met on the job at Freemans (one of our all-time favorite restaurants) opened Vinegar Hill House (V.H.H.) in Dumbo, we took it as a sign that it was time for Infatuation to expand out of borough. So without further ado … drum-roll please … we present our first Brooklyn review.

The first thing that will hit you when you walk into V.H.H. is the heady smell of smoldering firewood coming from the wood-burning oven in the open kitchen. V.H.H. has a more rural feel to it than Freemans, although they are definitely cut from a similar cloth. Feel like you’re eating in an eccentric friends dining room filled with vintage chotchkies and old family treasures? That’s because you are. The owners actually live in the house directly behind the restaurant and use the tree laden patio in-between for quaint garden dining. The old time vibe is cool, but they might want to look into some new outdoor furniture. We witnessed a fully plated table across from us crumble to the ground, spilling fine food and wine everywhere. It was kind of nuts.

Despite their lack of functioning furniture, the Hill House is well worth the trek to BK. It’s hip without giving off that “too cool” vibe some restaurants can have. The food is outstanding and, for a change, affordable.

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