New York City: Babbo (July 2012)

My spouse and I ate lunch at Babbo on the July Fourth holiday 2012. We had tried a few times in years past to eat at Babbo, but we never got more than a continuously busy signal when we called to make a reservation. Now things are different for two reasons – diners have more choices on when to dine because Babbo is open for lunch, and you can use the Open Table reservation system to make a booking on-line rather than having to call on a specific date at a specific time and take your place in the on-hold queue. The ground-floor restaurant space is attractive, with a nice-size bar towards the front and tables towards the back. There’s a grand staircase toward the back of the restaurant, but I’m not sure what is upstairs. It may be more dining room, but on the day that we lunched, even the tables on the ground floor were not fully occupied. Babbo is better equipped to handle small parties (tables of 2 or 4) but can accommodate up to 6 people at one table, I believe. We didn’t have the greatest table – it was all the way in the back of the restaurant nearest the doorway to the restrooms and kitchen; however, it did provide a good vantage point from which to see the entire first-floor dining room. Our reservation time was 11:30, but Babbo didn’t open/unlock the doors until exactly that time (no possibility of having a drink at the bar first), so there were lots of customers waiting around on the street who all wished to be seated at the same time. Service was acceptable, but not great, although there were many wait people present. It seemed like the larger parties (and parties imbibing in bottles of wine) received preferential/better service than smaller parties. We were encouraged to try the lunch tasting menu because it was our first time dining at Babbo; however, we declined because the items did not interest us as much as some of the items on the a la carte menu. The set tasting menu would have been a better “deal”, with 4 courses for $49. Even though we didn’t participate in the lunch tasting, we each still ordered four courses each, with the total amounting to much more than that per person; however, we felt that we tried the dishes that really appeal to us rather than what the restaurant wanted to serve. We would loved to have been able to try the multi-course pasta tasting or the traditional tasting menus, but those are available only at dinnertime. For antipasti, we ordered the bufala mozzarella with coppa salumi and the market beans Milanese topped with a duck egg (both fantastic!). For our second course, we each ordered a pasta dish – gnocchi and ravioli (again, both excellent), and for our entrées, we ordered the turkey porchetta and the mixed grill, which contained a tiny lamb chop, sweetbreads, and tongue. The porchetta was a hit, but the mixed grill was a bit of a miss. For dessert, we ordered a saffron panna cotta accompanied by rhubarb sauce and rhubarb sorbet, which was underwhelming despite Babbo employing a well-know pastry chef (Gina DePalma). The food was terrific, so it was the service that needed improvement. A long time elapsed between our courses (it took more than 3 hours for our lunch – more acceptable on a holiday, but unacceptable during a business day), and our drink glasses were continually empty. This particularly surprised us, because restaurants tend to make a lot of money from alcohol, but our waiter did little to increase our bill. Overall, a pleasant dining experience – fortunately the food was good enough to overcome the lackluster service.