My lovely friend HB & her bf decided to take B & I out for dinner as a thank you for taking them camping. We decided to hit up ‘inoteca, formerly Bar Milano (same owners – maybe the same chef(s)? – but downscaling due to the economy). I’ve been to ‘ino before and enjoyed it, so I figured this would be similar.
We arrived on time for our reservation – HB had walked by a few times before but it had always been packed, so she made reservations to ensure we had a table – but the place was pretty empty around 7 on a Friday night. Browsing the menu brought a lot of worried glances around the table – while B is technically sort of Italian-American… none of us really got the menu. I expressed my annoyance and frustration and finally said “They should provide an Italian-English dictionary with this menu!” when B held up a card that had been included with the menus – a glossary of Italian terms. Score!
I actually didn’t take this photo to illustrate my point whatsoever… I took it so I’d remember what types of bruschette we ordered
…except some of the words weren’t on there. Seriously, I’ve noticed this “trend” at other Italian restaurants and it really bugs me. If you want to have the dishes’ names in Italian, that is your perogative… but either put the dish description in entirety below in English, a name translation in English, or expect me to complain loudly on my blog about how retarded your menu is for being in Italian (and the glossary not having every single Italian word translated, and I’m not talking ‘lasagna’ not being translated, I mean words that are much harder but escape my mind right now). Italian is not a commonly spoken language in the US (I looked it up: 0.38% of the country speaks it at home), and though most of those people are in the New York region, that doesn’t mean we can all pick up a menu in Italian and understand what the heck is going on!!! I hope this trend stops dead in its tracks because it is… I’m going to say it… f*tarded.
(And this goes for any language, any restaurant whose cuisine speaks a different language. If you expect to have American customers, English-speaking customers, customers outside of that culture/language, then your menu should be written clearly in English – maybe not in entirety, but at least enough so that the average person can walk in and comfortably read the menu and order from it.)
Okay, my angry rant is over, that just really aggravated me that we needed a glossary to decipher the menu…
Now onto the food 🙂
HB & I both really like beets, so we ordered this beet-hazelnut-cheese salad. It was tasty enough but nothing special.
For our bruschette, we ordered (from top left) pesto, ricotta, pepperonata, cauliflower, and fig & mascarpone. All of us were a little put off by how MUCH pesto was on the bread… it was alright tasting though. The ricotta was tasty with a bit of roasted red pepper topping it; the pepperonata (which, I believe, was not translated… and later it dawned on me that duh, it’s peppers & onions, but HB’s bf had chosen it, and he doesn’t like onions)… tasted exactly like the stuff you get with an Italian sausage on a hero. Which makes sense, because that’s Italian sausage & peppers…
The cauliflower, well-roasted, was pretty tasty, but crumbly and kept falling off the bread. But still, very tasty. And the fig/mascarpone (my selection, haha) was delicious! Silky soft mascarpone smoothed over a piece of bread, topped with a bit of (roasted?) fig… drizzled with either a bit of honey or fig-juices… meltingly delicious. I think the general consensus was that this one was the best of our choices… and cauliflower came in a close second. I only wish the bread were a bit crisper.
Because we’re crazy like that, we decided to order everything from the section of the menu that we think was titled “Fried.” This first dish is the rice balls. For some reason, ‘inoteca really likes serving things in odd numbers (you see the bruschette comes in 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9… and you’ll see…).
Traditionally, rice balls are large affairs, rice formed around peas, ground beef, and I think fried (maybe baked?). When you eat it, you’re meant to break it open, and red sauce is ladled over the top. BF likes these a lot, though I’ve at most had a bite of one of his before (because he likes them a lot, and I’m not a rice fan in general). As you can see mine broken into above, there are no peas… but I’m not faulting this for authenticity. I wasn’t happy because these just didn’t taste good. They were mushy, no crispness to them at all, and very bland… except this overwhelming nuttiness, not in a good way. It was the nuttiness of whole grain whatever- maybe they used whole grain flour to coat these before they fried or baked them? The flavor overpowered everything else about the ball, and BF was distinctly not happy as he doesn’t like whole grain or whole wheat anything. No good.
Next up were the chickpea fries. With the exception of my boyfriend, we’d all been at Craft Bar and eaten those horribly dense, cakey chickpea fries, so we were reasonably apprehensive about what would come. These were thin, well-fried, and crispy… but the taste was not appealing. It would also have been nice to come with a dipping sauce – but instead, the wedge of lemon that was at the bottom of the bowl (you can’t even see it in the photo) added a spot of brightness to the last piece I ate. But I would pass on these.
Fried mozzarella… which was stuffed into bread of some sort along with anchovies. The bread tasted like a bad donut. I don’t mind anchovies but these were very fishy and overwhelmed the mild mozzarella. Saving note was the little dish of tomato mixture, which added some brightness and a counterpoint of acidity, but it couldn’t save the dense and oily dish completely.
(See? Three pieces, another odd number.) Last from the fried menu were potato croquettes. I actually liked these… nothing offensive about mashed potatoes formed into sticks and deep fried! One odd thing was that I found chewy bits in my piece – almost like bits of squid or someting with that texture – but everyone else said they had nothing but potato in theirs. I’m not unfamiliar with croquettes and definitely have had that texture in my potato croquettes before, so I wasn’t offended, but I was surprised that I managed to be the only one out of 4 people to taste it.
To round out our meal, we also ordered a pasta dish… pesto with bitter greens and paper thin slices of cheese. So, in our defense, the name of the bitter green wasn’t translated, and none of us realized what it was exactly. We all like veggies, so this shouldn’t have been even an issue, but whatever they used was super bitter. We all had a few bites before we just couldn’t eat anymore – we didn’t finish this dish. Even if you didn’t eat the veggie, it was bitter, because I think the pesto was made with it as well.
At this point, we were all still just having a good time, chatting away and y’know, doing what friends do over dinner. We decided on a sweet ending to the meal.
I ordered the nutella panino… I don’t know if you can tell but the sandwich was about 3″ on one side. Which would have been fine, because I only wanted a slightly sweet end… but the chocolate inside was just burnt to crap and dried out. Horrible. Slipping in the apricot at least livened it up a bit and moistened the sandwich, but BF took one bite and got really mad on my behalf that I would be served that crap.
Yes, panna cotta was on the menu, but I didn’t order it… because BF wanted to order it. Tart cherries piled on top of a wiggly mass of panna cotta. If you’re familiar with how I am… well, I did notice that the edges indicated it was set in paper or some sort of unconventional mold. But who cares about that? Or the vanilla beans you can see at the top of the panna cotta? You want to know how it tasted. But what I was trying to say is that I first took a plain spoonful to see how just the panna cotta tasted.
Like gelled cream. Hardly any sugar, and the vanilla was unnoticeable, completely. I frowned and BF whispered “Your panna cotta is so much better,” to which I responded, “You’re damn straight mine is better, I know how to sweeten it.” After I tried a bite with a little bit of cherry and some of the syrup on the bottom of the plate, I still found it lacking (I didn’t like the texture being so wobbly, but that’s personal preference). BF thought it was alright, passable, suitably decent. HB & her bf had also ordered one to share, but thought it was alright. Nothing great.
Of course, that was the overwhelming feeling we left ‘inoteca thinking: “Nothing great.”
Except sometimes as you digest a meal, and you think about each component… and put it all together… later on, you just might realize your true feelings about the place.
Yvo says: Speaking to HB the next night, we both agreed we’d never go back to ‘inoteca. The food was overwhelmingly mediocre and overpriced for what it was. The car ride home after, BF even remarked to me that everything was pretty shitty… the only stuff that tasted good was the stuff that we could easily replicate at home. It’s true that I’ve read other people’s positive experiences, but they avoided the cooked foods and stuck to wine & the salumeria/cured meats & cheeses. Which… it’s not like I can’t go out and buy my own selection of cured meats & cheeses, since I don’t believe ‘inoteca makes its own cheese! A resounding “oh, hell no” – this place is still overpriced and the food just not worth it. And the headache from trying to translate the menu…? Don’t even get me started on that again…
not recommended for a meal… if you want wine & salumeria I guess it should be fine
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