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Manhattan: Otto Pizzeria

1 5th Avenue , Phone: 212-995-9559
www.ottopizzeria.com
Closing day: None

Reviewed by: Kim from NJ, review #3789

When: 2011

It's not bad, but we go for one reason, the incredibly expensive, incredibly delicious pizza with egg, guanciale and truffles!

Directions: The address is 5th avenue but it's at the corner of 5th avenue and east 8th street and the entrance is actually on 8th street.

Truffle, Guanciale and Egg Pizza, photo by Kim

Otto, another restaurant in the Mario Batali empire, serves pretty good pasta, and very good thin crust pizzas like you find in Italy. It's one of the places I liked to take my kids when they were younger (and they still enjoy visiting) because it had plenty of options to satisfy their picky palates as well as keep the adults happy. As I said though we return for their egg, guanciale and truffle pizza which has never been added to the menu but for the last six months has always been a special. It's crazy pricy though at $35 while their other pizzas range from $9 - $14. Without any antipasti, one pizza is definitely enough for one person, smaller appetites could share. If you have any antipasti, two people could share.

That's what we did when we visited in September, enjoying three antipasti of caponata, mixed mushrooms and spicy rabe (this one was just okay but the other two were delicious) followed by the aforementioned truffle pizza. This with a glass of wine (their pours, by the way, are more like a serving and a half but that glass of wine will probably be in the teens), a diet coke (someone was recovering for the previous evening) and a post-meal macchiato and the bill came to about $76.

Be warned though, when they first opened, we had a small Slow Travel get together there for the moderators on a Friday night. We dubbed it the loudest restaurant ever. I've since returned in the evenings (on a Saturday with a 9:30 pm reservation) and it was still loud and perhaps a bit quick on the service. While my husband enjoys the boisterous vibe at night more, I prefer going for lunch when it's not crowded and you can linger over your wine, dessert, or coffee in an easy to talk atmosphere.

Oh, and their house-made gelato is pretty good - if they have the salted peanut on the menu, try it; it's my favorite!

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.

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