My little cousin Angie, another L.A. native, came to visit me in New York once. She was 18 and getting ready for college, and I was the worldly 25 year old who wanted to take her out to a fabulous dinner in fabulous New York. Hoping for a celeb sighting she could brag about to her new friends at college, I decided on Balthazar, a place I really enjoy during off hours.
Angie was the same as I was at her age -- green, suburban, and a little scared. Before I left for college, my idea of a fancy dinner out was the surf and turf special at the Sizzler's down the street from my high school. Angie opened up the menu and her eyes widened. "It's so expensive!" And compared to Sizzler's, it is.
"Order anything you'd like, it's on me," I winked, trying to play the sophisticated elder to Angie's doe in headlights.
"I don't know what anything is," she said.
"Oh, okay...well, what do you like?...Do you like...chicken? How about the roasted chicken?" I asked.
"I guess so. But what is a ga...no...chee..."
"Ah, gnocchi!" I beamed. "It's a sort of dumpling made with potatoes and flour...kind of like a pasta."
"Pasta," she said thoughtfully. "What about chanter..."
"Chanterelles!" I trilled. "A chanterelle is a beautiful wild mushroom, yellow, they grow in the spring--"
"Mushrooms..." she said. "So basically, it's chicken with pasta and mushrooms?"
"Umm...yeah...I guess you could say that it's chicken with pasta and mushrooms."
I don't think Angie was impressed. But it taught me a lesson. Why does "roasted chicken with gnocchi and chanterelles" sound so different from "chicken with mushrooms and pasta"? I mean, don't you hate it when you go to a restaurant and practically the entire menu is in some durn fahreign language ya can't understand, so you have to keep calling the waiter over for translations?
So what are you really buying? And would you pay that same amount if the menu were all in prim, sensible shoes-wearing English? In this hard-hitting, minimally-googled series, I translate some of NYC's fancified, inscrutable menus.
Babbo Pasta Tasting Menu
Squid Ink flat noodles with parsnips and unsmoked bacon (Black Tagliatelle with Parsnips and Pancetta)
Dumplings with poppy seeds ("Casunzei" with Poppy Seeds)
"Trachea" noodles with sauteed mushrooms (Garganelli with Funghi Trifolati)
Marco's Pyramids with tomato puree (Marco's Pyramids with Passato di Pomodoro)
Wide noodles with meat sauce (Pappardelle Bolognese)
Ripe Figs (Fico Ripieno)
Saffron Cooked Cream with Vanilla-Scented Mango and Mango Ice(Saffron Panna Cotta with Vanilla-Scented Mango and Mango Sorbetto)
$59 per person, requires participation of entire table
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