Babbo

Food, one word. Insanity. Staff two words. Top notch. Friendly and professional. Will be back.

We recently went to Babbo having read Joe Bastianich’s book and we were quite underwhelmed. Pretentious bar tender with little to no wine knowledge, read the back of the bottle to describe a wine and made up the grape varietal. Service was very attentive, probably the highlight, food was less than amazing for the price. Started with octopus, which is not easy to make but if one can’t, stick with calamari. The liver ravioli only imaginative item we tried, the lamb chops nothing special, fish over cooked and brought to the table before other entrees and without service items. The olive cake of all things was dry but gelato and aged balsamic were fine accompaniments.
Bottom line excited to go but disappointed with Babbo, would recommend Pasternak’s Esca or Eataly for half the price from this team!

Enjoyed a lovely dinner with friends on a Friday night. The Sommelier was OUTSTANDING and paired two bottles of wine with our dinner. I’m a fan of the beef cheeks ravioli and my favorite was the lamb tartar. What an amazing culinary experience!

Best pasta dishes!
The main entrées are good (A-​), but could be improved.
Super knowledgeable waiters.

This was our second time at Babbo. Our first time was at Christmas so we needed to try it at a less busy time. The food was OK there were some outstanding dishes and some that were pre-​frozen. The dishes that were outstanding do not excuse the frozen and dishes that were not cook and seasoned to meet anyones that knows expectations. Mario is a very wonderful man and great CHEF… I don’t really think this is what he thinks is being served at his flagship. The servers were all very nice. We never met anyone in management even though we sent back one main and were served our sides for desert!!! Mario needs to be present or hire a manager that cares about his reputation !!! The way things are the only ones that will be happy are tourists ! Maybe thats his target and if so, so be it… Foodies looking for a Quality Italian meal need to look elsewhere !!

I came here on a Saturday night, it was a usual Saturday busy night; but not too crazy. The hostess suggested we sit at the bar and we agreed. we had the best bartender/​waitress very. she was super knowledgeable about the menu, knew how make the best cocktail and mocktails! She said what dishes we are going for before making our drink so that our palettes can be prepped for our meal. She suggest the steamed cockles and comp bread, which was pretty good. My bartender/​hostess suggested I order the goat cheese ravioli was was really tasty, Al dente. My guy had the black Spaghetti and he raved about how good it was. A comp sample dessert was also given to us and it was very tasty.
FYI it is a white table cloth set up ex. kinda semi casual dressy, although we were no where near dressed up but most of the people were. Mainly, based on what people were wearing nobody was just sitting in there with yoga Lululemon pants on to dine unless your a celeb incognito and they (establishment) personal knew you.
I will return, saw some items on the menu I will like to try!

I was in town for work and wanted to eat at Babbo but I was alone and obviously didn’t have enough time to make a reservation. I came in around 5:45 and sat at the bar. The bar staff here is incredibly knowledgeable, fun, friendly and attentive. I never felt like I was just a person sitting there having drinks and food dropped off to be ignored. They were able to describe every food and drink perfectly, and I even had another singleton sitting next to me who had been there plenty of times who the bartender obviously knew well. Great conversation ensued. Even a taste of some of their specialty after dinner drinks which I had never had before (which was VERY STRONG).
The food was amazing. Since ramps were in season at the time, I got as many dishes with ramps in it as possible. The wine was selected by the bartender and it was excellent. Obviously, this place is not cheap. For a drink, app, entrée and dessert it was about $ 150 with tip. But for two people, to eat like I ate for $ 300 in NYC is about on par with restaurants of this quality. It’s a small restaurant– make reservations in advance. Well worth it.

It was Sunday afternoon in Spring. We walked around the city but the weather was a bit too cold.
We were ready to call it quits for the day when we saw this warm, welcoming light of the restaurant.
We didn’t have a reservation but luckily got the seats by the entrance.
The restaurant was «Babbo», one of the many restaurants run by the great iron chef, Mario Batali
With such, we had very high expectation on everything, starting from the bread to the last sip of espresso.
But to our surprise, we have to say it’s surpassed our expectations.
The Black Tagliatelle was just out of this world as other viewers before us have recommended, maybe even better than the one I had in Italy.
The duck was nice and soft, deliciously prepared too.
We will definitely come back again.
Grazie mille!

Took a two of my friends here on a monday night. We didn’t ave reservations and came as walk ins. We were quickly seated and our server was at our table right away. He was so knowledgable about the menu and made some excellent recommendations. Everything on the menu looked delicious, ultimately we went with his recommendations. We ordered the octopus appetizer and three pasta dishes, which the server recommended splitting amongst the three of us family style. We were in agreement, and it was the best decision.
The grilled octopus was one of the best things I have ever eaten. Delightfully flavorful, pleasantly crisp and soft all at the same time. Amazing.
They then brought our the pasta and they had already split it for us. They brought it out as though we were doing the pasta tasting (which I hope to be able to go back and do soon!)The Black spaghetti with rock shrimp was one of the most unique pastas I have ever tasted and I highly recommend it. The Garganelli was perfection and then the beef cheek ravioli was thoroughly enjoyed by my dinner companions (I don’t eat beef).
At the end of the meal, we passed on dessert but they brought out a cute little plate of cookies.
What a wonderful experience. I would recommend this place to anyone and everyone. Its not your typical Italian restaurant, but you will certainly find the traditional Italian hospitality!!!

I’ve been here a few times and after trying so many things including the pasta tasting menu, my favorite 2 items that I will always go back for are the pig’s foot milanese and the black spaghetti. Everything else I had were good (kind of overrated) but I wouldn’t come back for it again.
This is a great date spot though! And a place if you want to go «star”-gazing. Lots of famous people come here to eat.

I love pasta, and I’ve been eyeing Babbo’s pasta tasting menu for years now. I don’t know why it took so long to make it here, but I finally made it! Thank the pasta gods (and the boyfriend).
The first three pasta dishes we had were all vegetable and cheese, or at least I think they were. The first Black Tagliatelle with Pea and Castelmagno and third Garganelli with «Funghi Trifolati» were my favorites. I’ve never had a pureed pea and cheese sauce before and it was deliciously fresh and tasted as green as it looked, which is a good thing. I also love, love, love mushrooms, and the Garganelli and mushroom pasta was umami to the max. Perfect. The next (and last) two pasta dishes were tomato-​based, and I suppose after having eaten so many tomato sauces before, they stood out less. My stomach was also starting to pull a Violet Beauregarde at this point, so eating was regrettably less enjoyable. The pappardelle, one of my favorite pastas, was lovely though. It was perfectly silky and tender, and I only wish I could eat pasta of that caliber every day.
For dessert, I wasn’t sure why there were 2 on the menu and what happens? They surprise us with 3… followed by complimentary cookies! Had I been in any other state than stuffed, I would’ve been giddy at the sight of them. Of all the sweets, the olive oil gelato was probably the most interesting. I’ve never had it before and it’s never a flavor I’d associate with dessert, but it worked and it worked well.
As for every thing else, we had a number of servers ballet their way around us as we ate our perfectly paced 7 courses, and they were all great. After 11pm, the playlist was churning out non-​stop AC/​DC. I’m on the fence about it, but think it was crazy enough to work.
Babbo, thank you for a heavenly pasta-​filled night.

Holy cow! The paperdelle bolognese is to die for, absolutely perfectly cooked pasta and excellent sauce, probably the best I have ever had!
Another A+ dish is the octopus appetizer, it was INCREDIBLE hands down the best quality octopus ever!
Another thing I loved is that they split everything for us, as well as our last glass of wine– wooohoo!
We also had the squid ink pasta dish, with shrimp and bacon– not so impressed with texture and over salted.

Babbo is one of those classic restaurants that makes you love New York. The food is top notch (I think they have a Michelin star), and the ambiance, complete with the rock music playing in the background, makes for an inviting and relaxed space.
My favorite dish on the menu is actually the two minute calamari. I know — it’s just calamari, but I think the true test of a chef is to make something mundane delicious, and the calamari is just that. It’s melt in your mouth tender and so, so tasty. The pastas are also really good (duh)!
Not sure what all the gripes are about the service — it’s not bow ties and white gloves, but that’s also not what they’re going for.

I came here for lunch on a Saturday, girlfriend made reservations a month in advance. The food was a let down from what I was expecting…
For our pastas we ordered the gnocchi and the beef cheek ravioli. The gnocchi came out okay, they were fluffy but the sauce was watery, like literally watery tomato pasta water on my plate, which made the gnocchi pretty flavorless. Don’t know if that is intentional or not, but wasn’t good. The beef cheek ravioli was pretty on point, but the pasta was really too al dente, like it still had a crunch… Was expecting better of this 1 Michelin star, small technique errors…
The prawn appetizer had some great flavor though. And service was pretty on point!

SERVICE:
While attentive, the people seemed a bit snooty with a «I’m better than you» attitude. Almost like you needed to apologize for them having to waste their time on you (I’m sorry for the $ 300+ I’m about to drop to have a nice dinner out — my apologies for the inconvenience…). Not only was there a bit of a snobbery vibe going on, but we also had to wait a good 20 minutes to be seated for our 7:30PM reservation on a Sunday night. Just kind of annoying as you expect to be seated somewhat promptly, in addition to the fact that there is nowhere to stand while you wait for your table; you’re awkwardly in the way of guests and servers no matter where you stand. So, not the greatest first impression.
FOOD:
The food, on the otherhand, was wonderful. Everything was very tasty; and the portions were huge; much larger than what we were expecting (we were thinking the plates would be on the smaller side — like an equivalent of an SPQR of SF portions/​quantities). As per usual, we opted to go big with the pasta dishes instead of going for the secondi options (we generally like the appetizers and pastas the best at Italian places).
Grilled Octopus (3.5 stars): When we see octopus on the menu, we always get it. The previous night we were blown away by an octopus dish at Boqueria (Spanish spot in the Flatiron District); this dish, while good, didn’t even compare to the dish we had had the night before. But it was still very good.
Baby Wild Arugula (3.5 stars): The olive oil in the dressing was delicious; very spicy and peppery. Salad was very fresh, and a great «lighter» option.
Mint Love Letters with Spicy Lamb Sausage (5 stars): The winning dish of the night; the flavors worked so wonderfully together. Such a fresh, light tasting dish, yet also savory. Definitely recommend this dish.
Spaghettini with Spicy Budding Chives and One Pound Lobster (4.7 stars): A close second to the Mint Love Letters. Yikes, this was delicious. The lobster was so clean and sweet; a perfect pop/​crunch to it. SO delicious; with the perfect amount of spice. I dominated this dish while my husband dominated the following dish.
Black Spaghetti with Rock Shrimp, Spicy Salami Calabrese, and Green Chilies (4.5 stars): Decadent, buttery, salty, rich, and delicious. The rock shrimp, like the lobster in the former dish, was so fresh — perfectly cooked (no chalky, gumminess to these shrimp — perfectly cooked with that pop/​crunch I love). One of the best squid ink pastas I’ve had since Spain (everything comes second to that pasta we found unexpectedly while traveling abroad!).
For dessert we shared a glass of amaretto, had two espressos, and shared a piece of chocolate hazelnut cake. The dessert was just «okay» in our opinion; the amaretto was tasty though :)
Would definitely recommend Babbo for a nice Italian dinner out. Would definitely recommend focusing on the pastas, as those were definitely the highlight in our opinion. Next time we’re in NYC we plan on stopping in L’Atelier — we ended up at Babbo since we weren’t able to get reservations at the former locale. But, we weren’t disappointed in our experience at Babbo by any means!

Great service, food, and ambience! I’m perplexed to see the lo ratings on here, but my experience was superb. Let’s start with service. It was by far amazing. The dishes were all synchronized, the servers were attentive and knowledgeable, and the wine service was great. The server split our dishes throughout our meal so we created a semi tasting experience. Instead of dumping all our food at once each dish was spaced out with perfect timing. The bread kept coming, wine was always full, and everyone at our table was impressed.
Ambience wise this place has a cool vibe. It almost looks like a house with seating at bottom and top. The background music is popping with 80’s and classic pop songs. Only thing was that it was a tad high so you could t enjoy a conversation.
Now, the food was absolutely amazing. We ordered a lot and left without that nasty overly full feeling. For appetizers i definitely recommend the mozzarella. The toasted pesto type bread it’s see fed with is to die for. For entrees we opted to share our pastas and the server split them for us. The goose liver ravioli with balsamic vinegar is a talking piece. I’ve never seen a dish like this in my life. It almost looks like black tar, but once you bite on you’re in for a surprise. The beef cheek ravioli is a must. It’s packed with flavor and perfect for sharing. The oxtail gnocchi is also a must. It’s light, but seasoned and tossed with the right amount of tomato sauce. Just great!
Desert wise, I was tempted to try the olive oil cake, but was persuaded to get the pistachio and chocolate segafredo. To be honest, it was just okay. Nothing memorable like the pasta dishes. At the end of the meal they give you yummy little cookies which I thought was way better than the dessert so just save room for those.
This spot definitely lived up to the hype and it’s my new favorite place in the west village!

Not even a shadow of its former self.
Babbo used to be my go-​to restaurant when I had a bad day, there’s nothing a good old plate of perfectly cooked pasta that can’t cure. What happened???
We were party of 3 on a Saturday night, 10:30p reservation. I am not even going to mention the hostess bringing us up to the second floor just to find out the table available was only for two or the unruly service of our server. I want to focus on the food. We ordered appetizers and five pastas. The once signature Beef Cheek Ravioli and Mint Envelopes have been reduced to lackluster dishes. The Chianti-​stained pappardelle with ragu made me want to weep for the once great Babbo. The pappardelle was mushy, the ragu was watery and tasteless and I have a picture to prove it.
RIP Babbo. I am extremely sad this experience ruined the beautiful memory of you.

Before going there on Sunday night, I checked on Unilocal and saw that they will be closed at Midnight so I was hurry to go there.
However, when I arrived the restaurant at 11.05pm, the host told me that they are closed!
I showed him the Unilocal page, which showed that the restaurant is still open and will be closed in 50 mins. All he said was that we are closed for tonight. We are usually closed at 11pm on Sunday night and Unilocal is wrong!
Excuse me? Did you know that the one who filled the operation hours on Unilocal is your manager or owner and you can always edit all biz info? How come you just blame on Unilocal,not your restaurant???
This was the first time I visited the restaurant, but from this unprofessional issue, I don’t think I should expect good dining experience here.
P. S. Before I left, the host told me that my feedback about operation hours on Unilocal will be sent, but a week has passed and no one makes it right! That’s why I leave feedback here.

With all the talk about how difficult it is to get a reservation at Babbo, I immediately checked and booked a table via Opentable exactly a month in advance for the boyfriend and I’s anniversary.
My boyfriend was running late, so I informed the host of this. He told me this wasn’t a problem and to wait at the bar and inform him when my boyfriend arrived. However, when my boyfriend arrived 15 minutes later, the host said due to the lateness and timing, he gave our table away. I was absolutely flabbergasted… how do you tell your guests that you gave their table away when they made a reservation? Sure my boyfriend was late, but you accepted this fact in advance. Anyways, we were given a corner table by the bar instead, which felt so unwelcoming and so far away from the main dining table. This should have been my sign to just leave because if things couldn’t have gone worse, EVERYTHING continued to go downhill from there. But I couldn’t just leave due to having already arrived at Babbo and anticipated a great meal.
We were greeted with the amuse of the chickpea crostini while we waited for the famous beef cheek ravioli and the wild boar ragu pappardelle. Within minutes of ordering, our pasta dishes came out practically instantly. Instantly as in we didn’t even really touch, let alone finish the chickpea crostini. In fact, the waiter took the crostini away from us without even asking. The quickness was portrayed in the pasta as they were both cold. However, we couldn’t tell the waiter because he was nowhere to be found. At this point, I was super unimpressed with Babbo and wanted to leave instantly.
All in all, Babbo was so much excitement and anticipation wasted. From the service to the food, there are way better restaurants out there.

We visited Babbo on a Saturday night. We did not have a reservation and arrived at 5:30 or so. We were immediately seated.
It took us a while to order but our server was very patient and had suggestions for us. I had a glass of prosecco and my dining partner had a Manhattan. They gave us bread but you have to ask for olive oil if you want it.
The tables are all very close together in the front so we saw what everyone else ordered and made some of our decisions based on that. We ordered the octopus as an appetizer and we ordered three pastas for dinner to split.
The octopus was fantastic. It was perfectly cooked and it was in a flavorful, tangy sauce. Excellent dish. 5 stars on its own — highly recommend.
For the pastas, the beef cheek ravioli came out first. The raviolis were filled with squab liver and it came in a brown sauce. I liked this dish. Everything was cooked and proportioned well. It’s a heavy winter dish and is quite game-​y.
The other two pasta dishes came out thereafter. We had the gnocchi with oxtail and the orecchiette with rapini and sweet sausage. The gnocchi were good but the oxtail mix didn’t seem cohesive. The orecchiette were EXCELLENT although the sausage was nowhere to be found. The sauce on this was great — thin and red. The rapini added a nice touch.
We ordered the chocolate hazelnut cake for dessert. The dessert itself was great, but our first order had a hair in it, which has never before happened to me at a nice restaurant. The guy who took the dessert away seemed annoyed which I thought was rude as I did nothing wrong and was also very polite about the issue, but the manager who came back with a new (comped) one was super apologetic which was nice. The dessert itself though — very good. We were stuffed but still managed to finish this.
The restaurant gives you coat check tickets to pick up your leftovers at the end.
Another reason though that this didn’t receive at least 4 stars was that I saw some things happen that I did not like. Two ladies were not allowed to sit at the bar because they weren’t eating, and one of the managers was not very nice about it. To be fair, it’s a bar — you should be able to sit there to drink. Additionally, the table next to us was in a rush to get their check because they were trying to get to a Broadway show. They had to ask for their check 3 times and they were getting upset about it, which was sad for us to see as well. On the third time they asked, we actually interjected as well.
All in all, if you order right, you can have a 4 – 5 star experience here. I just felt that some of the dishes were knockouts and some missed the mark — especially for the price point. While our service was pretty good, it also seemed to be hit or miss. I would consider coming back.

A very decent Italian restaurant with every piece represented. It was not a quiet place at all so do not expect a high level of privacy; nevertheless this place really stands out in terms of food authenticity.
We were not starving so went straight with a la carte menu. Grilled octopus as appetizer, black spaghetti, grilled duck and quail as main courses. We got everything for share so each of us could try something different. In my opinion, duck was the best dish among all (and really you cannot mess up with duck dish…) with crispy skin and juicy meat. For dessert, we got the pear and almond sottosopra, which served as a perfect ending.
I’m actually a bit regretful as not being able to get the tasting menu; yet each course indeed impressed me.