Restaurant Review: Morandi – West Village NYC

When traveling to New York City this year, my job was making all the dinner reservations. No problem there!!!  I loved every minute of the planning!  Traveling with three other girls (my mom, aunt, and sister) made it easy to plan – all I needed was fun atmosphere and great food!  For assistance, I went straight to the source – to someone who lives right in the city!  She provided us with a great list of several restaurants and then I looked up their websites, reviews, and thought about what type of food I was in the mood for.

Me standing outside Morandi!

Our first night in the city also happened to be Mother’s Day, so we wanted something fun and memorable.  We chose a restaurant called Morandi, a rustic West Village restaurant specializing in Italian Cuisine.  It had the perfect neighborhood feel…someplace that you feel would be a local gathering place for friends.  It had a mix of indoor and outdoor seating, which was beautiful on the night we went.  We actually had a table that was half inside/half outside – right on the line where a window would potentially be.

Al Fresco Dining at Morandi in the West Village!

For an appetizer, we shared “Burrata e pachini,” which was a fresh Italian mozzarella cheese made with cream and served with cherry tomatoes roasted on the vine and drizzled with a decadent sauce.  YUM – I could sip wine and eat cheese every day!!

Burrata e pachini from Morandi, NYC

For dinner, I chose “Fusilli con granchio e pomodorini piccanti,” which was a spiral pasta with spicy crab and cherry tomato sauce.  The crab was great, but the entire dish turned out to be a little too spicy for my liking, but even still I ate the whole dish!!  If you like spicy, you will love it.  My mom had been craving bolognese sauce ever since she knew I had selected an Italian restaurant, so she immediately went to the “Tagliatelle alla bolognese,” an egg pasta with classic meat sauce which was heavenly.  My aunt ordered a typical pasta dish with plain sauce (boring!), but my sister went way out of the box and got something very different!!  She chose the “Gnudi di ricotta,” a spinach and sheep’s milk ricotta cheese dumplings.  They were green and quite interesting looking, but also extremely delicious.  If I went back there – that is definitely the dish I would order!

The Wine List!!

The seating was close together, but felt very quaint – we ended up chatting with the table next to us about the food and everyone was so friendly!  There was a lot of hustle and bustle and loud with all of the people and conversations going on.  But what was the most amazing to me was that with the melodic songs playing in the background and the chatter of the guests, I actually could not hear any traffic at all!  That’s saying a lot in New York City, especially when you are dining al fresco just a few feet from the road!!

Inside Morandi, West Village – NYC

And no, of course I did not pass up dessert!  I tried out a mini trifle!!!  If you’re planning to go to Morandi, I would definitely suggest making reservations and taking your appetite! ENJOY!!!!  If you go, you’ll have to let me know what you sampled off their menu!