Perbacco
243 E. 4th street, New York
Ph: 212 -253-2038
Perbacco, enoteca e cucina, describe themselves as a casual restaurant and wine bar in the East Village. When we arrived there close to nine pm on a Friday evening the place was crowded and we had to wait a while for our table to be cleared.
As I confess in my Travelblogue, New York, New York 2009 – Seven Days of Theatre, Food and Dance: PART III, I was tired and very hungry whe we arrived there - it being three hours past my usual dinner time - and the loud conversational noise level and cramped table - where I managed to knock over my glass of wine - did little to make me relax. As well the low ambient lighting made it impossible for my tired eyes to read the menu.
It took a couple of glasses of a very mellow red wine to calm me down but eventually it worked and I managed to enjoy the rest of the evening. My caveat is that the combination of wine-soothed neurons and inability to clearly see the notes that I took, means that my descriptions may not be as precise as I would like.
We each decided to have an appetizer and Mike also wanted to try an appetizer pasta dish.
For my appetizer I had a salad of thinly sliced peaches served with fresh basil and sweet Gorgonzola cheese and a 12 year old balsamic vinegar dressing. It was an excellent start to the meal, sweet and fresh, and I enjoyed the contrast of the gorgonzola with the peach .
Michael had figs stuffed with gorgonzola served with celery sticks. I tasted a bit - also very tasty.
He followed that with macarocini stuffed with rabbit, which Icould not resist tasting. Very nice.
We decided to share a Porterhouse steak for two served with potatoes and broccoli rabe (rapini). Fortunately we both enjoy a medium-rare steak and the steak was done to perfection. I really enjoyed it. However I thought the rapini was over cooked - the bitterness was quite apparent - and the potatoes were surprisingly undercooked.
But the piece de resistance was the dessert - the chocolate Perbacco slider. As you can see it looks exactly like a hamburger plate but... and here is where I am not exactly sure of what I noted down from Sasha, our friendly waiter's description.. The hamburger is actually a homemade angel cake with chocolate mousse and white chocolate. I believe he said that the onions are caramelized peaches and the french fries were made from sliced apple. The ketchup was a raspberry sauce. Regardless, the dessert was delicious and it looked exactly like a slider plate.
So after an inauspicious start to the evening mainly due to my hunger and fatigue, we ended up enjoying a good meal and I certainly felt much more relaxed and mellow as we strolled back to the apartment.
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