Bacaro

I have a ton of food porn pics that I haven’t put online yet, but I’ll get through it. If you don’t know already, I went to New York City this past February and tried out some of the local hot spots. This is my first time to the east coast, so I really didn’t care for any of the touristy places. My buddy and I, per recommendation, went to Bacaro which is Italian inspired cuisine. My plane had just landed about an hour and a half ago, and this is the first place that we went to.

Ambiance

I’ve never been to Manhattan before (or any parts of New York), so I thought this restaurant was in a strange neighborhood. The area was dimly lit with very little traffic. The lights inside the restaurant were dim, almost in a romantic type of setting. There are 2 sets of doors to walk through to get into the restaurant. The front counter lady greeted us and escorted us to a communal type of table downstairs of where she greeted us at. The layout of the tables and decor were all very tight together, which I wasn’t used to. Anyhow let’s get down to the food because honestly that’s why I really came here.

Food

We started off with appetizers. Our first appetizer was razorback clams with white lime and lemon. This was freaking delicious. If you didn’t know already, razorback clams have a lot of meat to them. These clams were literally soaking in their own juices with a lot of white wine and lemon. In my opinion, any seafood with white wine and lemon is a win win. It’s been a few months, but I remember there was some sort of grated cheese on top as well as butter all over the pan. So far, we’re off to a good start.

Next, we have the fried meatballs. I don’t know what inspired us to get this, but my disappointment is your gain. Fried meatballs already is sounding very plain. The taste of these were no better. They were bland and did not have much seasoning in them. I don’t remember if there was a sauce on the side for these, but they were unmemorable.

Onward to the main dishes! Here we have the marinated steak with some salad on the side. The steak as you can see is cooked rare. It’s a decent piece of steak with some fatty parts to it. What I do remember from this was that the steak was just ok. The seasoning they used to marinated the steak gave off an asian inspired taste similar to Korean galbi marinade. The meat was tender although I felt it may have been tenderized. This was my friend’s dish, and he was unimpressed. Hopefully mine would be better.

Here we have the braised pork shank. Let me just say this thing is freaking massive. I love pork, and this was no disappointment. In fact aside from the razorback clams, this was the best dish so far. The pork was very tender as it literally fell off the bone. The seasoning from what I remember was slightly salty. The veggies on top were all soft and fell apart in your mouth. The polenta on the bottom of it is pretty much your carbs to go with the meat. The broth on the bottom worked well with the rest of the components. I could not finish this dish unfortunately due to the time change, but it definitely was well worth the money.

Forgive me for the crappy lighting. I took most of these pics using an iPhone 4 with very limited lighting. This capped our night for desserts. Here we have panna cotta. If there’s one thing you should get here, it’s this one for dessert. This panna cotta was to die for! Not too sweet and not too bland, it literally had the perfect blend of sweet and taste. The sauce on the side complimented the panna cotta and didn’t even sweeten it. The panna cotta’s consistency was solid and didn’t fall apart at all, almost like a perfect flan. It was so good that a guy in our party got a second serving of it.

Final Verdict

All in all, Bacaro was a great start for me for my very first restaurant in Manhattan, New York. The food here had its hits and misses, but all in all the quality was superb and definitely exceeded my expectations compared to Los Angeles. If there’s one thing you should get, it’s the panna cotta for dessert. You will feel like you just detoxed your dinner after you eat it!

Revisions

1. Apr 14, 2012 - Initial revision.