Vapiano

Summary

Vapiano seems like it’s a chained Italian fast eatery. For the NYC location, the front desk gives you a card, and you walk up to a pasta station if you want pasta or a pizza station if you want pizza. You then tell the cook what you want, and they make it fresh in front of you. They ask that you take the card and tap the screen with it to get it charged with what you ordered. After you finish your meal, you pay as the cashier as you exit.

Here we have (top) filetto di manzo e rucola pasta with zucchini noodles and (bottom) scampi with campanelle.

The filetto is tender beef fillet with mushrooms, carrots, zucchini, balsamic onions, green onions with white wine & arugula. In lieu of the dough pasta, we got the zucchini noodles instead. The zucchini noodles basically did not have much flavor or texture as expected. The beef fillet was unseasoned and bland. The white wine, balsamic onions, and arugula were not enough to make any flavor to really shine here. So all in all, you got a really bland pasta dish.

The scampi was much better. It was much simpler in that it came with shrimp, spring onions, cherry tomatoes, fresh chili in tomato sauce, and some lemon juice. The sweetness of the cherry tomatoes and tomato sauce definitely had more prominence. The lemon juice gave it that zesty citrus sharpness at the tip of your tongue. This was definitely much more flavored and wholesome than the filetto. The campanelle pasta was cooked nicely and complemented the sauce well.

They also give you 3 slices of bread. When you sit down at various tables in the restaurant, they have herbs in pots that you can freely pull from, although this might not be sanitary in theory. There are also bottles of chili olive oil, regular olive oil, and balsamic vinegar that you can mix for your dip.

The ambiance here is pretty nice for a date night or very small after work thing. There’s a bar that you can get drinks, and the lighting is very comfortable. The tables that we sat at had wireless Qi chargers on the table, so that you can pretty much chill.

Final Verdict

For decent quick casual pasta place that isn’t a wallet killer and is surprisingly decent, this place is a good alternative to a normal sit-down Italian restaurant.

Yelp Jabs

Where do I begin? I didn’t get greeted by the front desk lady and she just handed the cards to me without saying a word. The quality of the dish was very disappointing. The pasta I got were penne and linguine, and you can tell that they were boiled in the water that probably had over a good amount of pasta cooked in there. Resulting in very starchy pasta and my linguine being clumped together. Literally feels like the pasta just sitting in my stomach!

Quick… someone lay the red carpet down for this person.

Portion size was fine - filling, but again, being that this isn’t exactly an artisanal pasta makes me feel like I’m being robbed in broad daylight. Oddly enough the bread it came with was the best part. I’ll also give them props for putting extra cheese on top as I requested.

Keep in mind this elitist ordered take-out, and they were expecting something above and beyond with … pasta pomodoro. Not sure why an elitist would expect a fast casual eatery’s pasta pomodoro to be something out of this world.