Allora

Summary

Today was our second anniversary, and it’s somewhat difficult to find a decent restaurant that has an outdoor garden that is away from the crowd. After staying up till 4 AM looking for one, I finally found one that was decent. The garden seating area is actually in the back of the restaurant, so there’s very little foot traffic from random people. Luckily the weather wasn’t hot at all.

They gave us complimentary cheese and sliced salami (?). There wasn’t anything special about this, though it was a nice complimentary dish at the beginning.

They also gave us green peppers. Careful, some of these are pretty hot.

This was the appetizer sampler, which had scallop, octopus, and calamari. The scallop was served with some type of tomato sauce, and it was cooked perfectly. The octopus was slightly cold, but the char, if served hot, was very nice. The calamari was also pretty good.

They are supposedly known for this 30 foot spaghetti. The noodle is a 30 foot continuous long noodle. When they serve this dish, the waiter picks up some spaghetti and gives you some scissors to cut it with. They then serve the noodles and meatballs to different plates. The noodles were definitey thicker with a chewy consistency and a nice bounce. The sauce is just meat sauce, and they offer you parmesan on the side. The meatballs were interesting. My partner didn’t like the texture, but I was fine with it. It was spongy similar to fish cake. I think the dish overall was pretty good, and the noodles were cooked nicely.

The porterhouse for 2 was actually pretty big and cooked medium rare. It’s really no different than other places that serve in this style except the porterhouse meat quality wasn’t the best. There were quite a few pieces of fat and tendons. Though, there were some parts where the meat was actually pretty dense and good. One nice part about this is the char on this steak was actually pretty good. Next time though, I think at non-steak Italian restaurants, I probably will stay away from ordering the porterhouse and should’ve opted for the veal instead.

The service was pretty good and attentive. Unfortunately because there weren’t any heat lamps, it got cold, so we decided to leave sooner than later.

Final Verdict

For an Italian restaurant in Midtown East area, this restaurant is actually pretty decent. Definitely get the pasta, and there’s no need to get the porterhouse.

Yelp Jabs

This isn’t a traditional steakhouse so it isn’t known for its steak, but honestly it should be.

I am not sure I agree here. Our porterhouse meat quality could’ve been much better. The char was excellent though.

This was good, but not what I would call great risotto, and I received comparable feedback from my coworkers regarding their saffron risotto and the squid ink ravioli. For the risotto the flavors were just a bit too simple and while I liked the cheesy consistency it wasn’t incrementall good compared to what I can find even back in Los Angeles. Single Star.

I think the one thing to be careful when comparing to LA foods is that there are many different variants of risotto. This restaurant is just 1 of many Italian establishments here in NYC. There are way more variants to try here in NYC than LA, so it might be rather quick for this elitist to jump to this conclusion.