Via Corroded: A Yelp Review
“But he isn’t wearing anything at all”- Child in The Emperor’s New Clothes, Hans Christian Anderson
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It’d been on our list for months. Jessica & I tried and failed once before, excitedly and slyly snaking past the lacquered black wooden door and 10 person line at 5:30pm on a Monday – only to be politely told “No names until 10:30pm"… Wow. That’s the New York exclusivity that teases the imagination to unrealistic levels of cerebral drooling. After impressive carb-laden experiences at Crispo and Fiaschetteria Pistoia, Via had to be next.
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3:30 pm on a Sunday. We arrive clownishly early, hoping to beat the lines…
Who eats dinner at 3:30pm anyway? But Via Carota was rammed with eager eaters. We were politely informed by a mustachioed man in a bowtie, “5:50pm please.” The minutes slip by as we await our polonaise with pappardelle, our tango with tagliatelle, our two step with tonnarelli.
5:50pm: “Apologies, 20 more minutes.” Still substantially earlier than our normal dinner time, we linger outside at their black cafe tables. A not-so-subtle kick and Jessica jerks her head to indicate something inside. “That's a famous DJ,” she whispers out of the corner of her mouth, "I keep making eye contact awkwardly.”
I’m skeptical – she’s prone to bouts of mild prosopagnosia – so I turn and subsequently, awkwardly, lock eyes with Ramy Malek (Best Actor Oscar winner playing Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody) seated just inside the window pretending to talk to his date.
6:10pm. We relocate inside to that strange purgatory between the line folk and the seated, scrunched up next to the bar with the other restless souls ever alert for shouted names and place cutters. Aperol spritz for Jessica, Negroni for me. Spirits buoyed by spirits, we were finally seated – of course, shoulder to shoulder to Malek.
Now sedentary, we embark on a litany of “seems". The waitress seems kind. The bread & olive oil seem available. The polpo seems delicious. The conversation next to us seems interesting. The desserts seem like a must order.
Veneers faded with a simple, Twistian ask, “May we please have some bread and olive oil?” Our waitress, offended, stormed off without reply. Later, with an aggressively passive-aggressive clammer, the bread slams onto white table cloth and olive oil spills from the corrugated ramequin in peppered Pollack dots.
Side bead and its condiments are often the gentle, hospitable reminder that you’re taken care of. Olive Garden practically makes a business out of their free breadsticks. It’s worth going to Orsay for the salted butter alone.
But in an Italian restaurant where complementary focaccia could ascend meals to legendary heights, Via falters – and perhaps the waitress knows this. Stale, lacking textural diversity, and unimpressive – the bread becomes a microcosm of our experience. Jessica and I shrug hopefully like two sailors willingly ignoring looming rainclouds.
There’s no price or portion diversity to the menu – everything is in the $18-$32 range and medium sized – which disrupts the natural cadence of our pre-ordained meal conformity - app, main, dessert. You’re stuck ordering two courses of demi-mains – then excessively hammering the dessert menu to appease appetites looking for a bite or two more of entrée.
The polpo – a cephalopod arm over diced olives – unsuccessfully straddles the two culinary realms of simply cooked and elaborate. The $18 grilled artichokes are tender but overpriced aside a forgotten side portion of aioli. Wild boar ragu follows a trend of edible but unsatisfying given our expectations. The famed cacio pepe, “non-optional” according to the Infatuation, is voraciously consumed but unable to elevate the collective melange of mediocrity.
We don’t glean much insight from our neighbors at table 10, Malek and his girlfriend, who’s conversation is sadly not noteworthy. Feeling down, we desperately look to processed sugar for respite. A chance for Carota, crown of the West Village, to show its quality.
Instead of walking away and taking the loss, Jessica & I double down: tiramisu and olive oil bread cake - once again, two dishes with major potential upside. But unaccompanied by garnishing, the olive cake is merely our nemesis, table bread, masquerading in generously applied olive oil and sugar. A scoop of ice cream might help – but even then, it would be a naive attempt to mask the mundane. Tiramisu is forgettable, whipped cream too heavy and ladyfingers too soggy for the “to die for” label our waitress bequests. We regrettably finished even the crumbs, an over-correction to slake our previously unsatisfied hunger.
8.6 on Infatuation. 5 stars on Resy despite not taking reservations. “New York’s most perfect restaurant” by the New Yorker. “No one has ever told me they dislike it” - Jeff Gordinier at Esquire.
Perhaps, like the famed denouement of Peter Luger (given a 1 star by Pete Wells of the NYT last fall), Via succumbed to the inevitable persistence of entropy. Yet among New Yorkers cuing at 3:30pm for dinner spots, the revelation hasn’t hit. Perhaps they feel if they doubt the mighty Via Carota, their tastebuds will be questioned, their erudite social positioning impugned. It is only the neophytes, Jessica and myself, who’s callow voices exclaim: “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”
The emperor, indeed, isn’t wearing any clothes.