ooh....maialino....

i had herceptin today and followed it with a visit to danny meyer's new restaurant, maialino.....

wow. i think i may have a new favorite restaurant. maialino is so beautifully done.....from the bar when you walk in all the way to the back room - what a pleasure. it's located in ian schrager's newly redone gramercy hotel - at the very end of lexington on the border of gramercy park. (trying not to date myself i did stay there when the hotel was a dump. i remember the mattress being on a slant)

the location still puts you in the center of the city yet in a quiet, slightly remote part of the big apple....the new entrance is subdued yet subtly elegant. when you walk into the restaurant, you feel as though you've found a little bit of europe in nyc.....while it's not quite roman in feeling i do believe the menu is geared towards rome...... rome (to my best recollection) has more of frenetic, crowded feeling which you totally do not have at maialino.

i want to talk about the food before i forget it (due to chemo)....we started with the fried artichokes, dandelion greens and the bottarga salad with the egg. while the dandelion greens were kind of small for a portion, they were deliciously dressed. the artichokes were the crowed favorite. perfectly done! we followed that with the salumi misti... a perfect assortment of cured meats with olives.

we then had 3 of their pastas, the cacio & pepe, the bolottini and the ravioli's....all yummy....and that was followed by the baccala, the chicken & the lamb...along with the potatoes, the brussel sprouts and the cippoline onions....a perfect assortment of food for the 5 of us....lucky everyone agreed to sharing!

dessert ...well some at the table wanted to pass but there was no way. i'm a huge fan of affogato (perfect dessert!) and it was superb. we joined that with the poached pear and the chocolate bread pudding....which were 2 of my friends' favorites. i still go with the affogato ....

i will say the service still needs a bit of help...they are eager and more than happy to oblige you but there were many mistakes throughout the course of our meal....we started with no pepper in our mill and continually needed to ask for serving pieces (we were 5 people sharing) for all our courses. our salt & pepper disappeared off the table at one point and we had to ask them to retrieve them. additionally, they were a little too eager to clear....we were still contemplating whether to mop up the remains on various plates when the servers came to take the plates away and it would have been embaressing to say, "wait - i'm still going to mop that up!".

a little less hurried service would probably solve that problem along with a little more attention to what should be on a table - ie. salt, pepper mill (filled), napkins, serving pieces, utensils.....because of the friendliness of the help, though, it never became a real issue. it just should be corrected so it can be in line with the rest of meyer's restaurants.....

cancer be damned, it was another great meal. not for nothing, but my companions made it alot of fun....thank you!!

onward. remains of sucky chemo round 4 are pretty much gone....hoping for 2 relatively good weeks......