Ignoring Most of the Menu: Gems at Quality Italian

Quality Italian's baby kale salad 

When I was invited to lunch at Quality Italian, I was not expecting a great meal. Techlicious held its annual CTATravel Lunch & Learn at this Italian steakhouse and, well, vegetarian.

Shrimp cocktail 

But I was pleasantly surprised. There was plenty for a non-steak eater to savor at this lovely restaurant.

Each table got a huge shrimp cocktail platter. The jumbo shrimp had cocktail sauce, chipotle mayo or lemon and the shrimp were utterly fresh and perfectly cooked.

Corn gnocchi

There was also a lovely baby kale salad, with pickled red onions. The colorful salad was devoured by all the meat eaters and vegetarians at my table.

Brussels Sprouts

We also had warm bread, with fruity olive oil for dipping. The pretty sausage and pepper garlic toast was not for me, but the others enjoyed it.

For my entree, I had corn gnocchi with pistachios. The sweet corn tasted of mid-summer, even though it is still technically late spring.

Steak fries

We had Brussels Sprouts Calabrese, roasted till crispy. And the Tuscan fries were really steak fries, properly salty and crunchy. I'm not a ketchup person, but I appreciated the Sir Kensington ketchup served with the fries.

Chocolate cannoli for dessert

Dessert was a chocolate cannoli with pistachio gelato. Yum!

Note: I was a guest of Techlicious at its #CTATravel Lunch & Learn event. I was not compensated for this post, but I was sated.

Vegetables and Laughs: Bond45

Bond 45 is incongruously located on 46th St. The website recognizes this oddity, writing "Yes, your wife is right. Bond 45 is now on West 46th Street."*

The antipasto platter

Nevertheless, when we arranged to go with a group of friend pre-theater, even my husband questioned my sanity. "Are you SURE it's on 46th Street?"  Well, yes.

The Italian restaurant is great for groups, and for eating before a Broadway show. There are pastas, pizzas and meat and fish entrees, of course. But we went for the vegetables.

Vegetables for non-vegetarians

Focaccia

Although our friends are meat eaters, they wanted something lighter before the show. Bond 45 has family style salads, like the large chopped salad platter we got. It had romaine, chickpeas, asparagus, roasted peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, almonds, avocado and cheese. 

The vegetable antipasto bar had nine different choices. You can get a three vegetable plate as an entree, five to share, or all nine for a group. We choose the latter platter.

Our platter had pickled cauliflower, eggplant part, a vegetable tart, Brussels sprouts, roasted Romanesco broccoli, chickpeas and a large ball of burrata. We spread the burrata on the warm focaccia that came to the table. 

Don't miss the fried artichokes

We didn't need, but had to have, the fried artichokes with lemon aioli. It was delicious.

Cocktails, too

Bond 45 has a number of half bottles of wine and reasonably priced carafes. We went the cocktail route. The apparel spritz had a hit of passion fruit and the Vesper martini had great olives. My Manhattan and an absinthe spray, which may be my new breath freshener. 

Although the restaurant was packed with an after work, weekend crowd, we were able to get our food quickly and get to the theater in time. But we weren't rushed, and our waiter joked around with us. He also pointed out the nearby backstage crew from Hamilton.

Sadly, the show we saw was no comparison.

*Note: Of COURSE I was right!

Return to classics: Classic Italian, New York Style

Grilled octopus and classic mozzarella and tomato appetizer

At The Leopard at des Artistes, you get a double flashback: the murals from Cafe des Artistes and the classic Italian food.

Murals at the Leopard at des Artistes

Cafe des Artistes was one of the early Upper West Side destination restaurants and had a curious location, off the lobby of an apartment building, Hotel des Artistes. This was not a hotel, but the apartments didn't have real kitchens, and the artist resident would come down in their pajamas to eat here.

The warm (and dark) bar

Back in the day before you could find decent food before or after a Lincoln Center performance, this is where we'd head. But the restaurant closed suddenly in 2009.

The murals, painted by Howard Chandler Christy, one of the building's residents, were restored when the restaurant reopened as The Leopard at des Artistes in 2011. You probably don't want to bring your kids here; the nude nymphs are not inappropriate, but they will likely elicit giggles and stares from young kids, who are really not the target audience here.

As I said, this is more of a throwback place, with the kind of hushed formality that used to being supreme at New York fine dining establishments. There are plenty of fresh flowers, thick white tablecloths, and waiters who spring over to refueled your napkin if you step away from your table.

Seafood pasta

Throwback prices, too

Luckily, the food matches the ambiance. The tasting menu is a great deal at $50 for three courses; there is also a 3 course wine pairing to accompany it for $30.

And if you dine here on Sundays, you can save money by bringing your own wine.  The bar, by the way, also has a classic, old world feel, with dark wood and martini shakers tinkling.

Meals start with an amuse bouche; usually, arancini, but since these were not vegetarian, we had airy chickpea fritters.

Our special meal - so many courses

We had a special tasting meal to cover a wide swatch of the menu
To start, we shared grilled Spanish octopus with pickled onions and buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes.

Then we had ethereal gnocchi with wild mushrooms, in a butter and sage sauce.

Mushroom gnocchi

Two down, two to go

Whole branzini

We then had a thick pasta with seafood. Or really, a seafood stew with a few strands of thick spaghetti. This is the inverse of the way many people serve pasta, allowing about half a pound a person; here, we had maybe two ounces of pasta and half a pound of seafood.

Then we had a whole branzini, filleted table side (another throwback) and sautéed broccoli rabe. The lemon half had a little mesh cover to keep the seeds out of the fish and of course, it was expertly filleted; not a tiny bone in sight. We could barely eat this (we took it home) and skipped dessert.

I would return to try the chestnut and ricotta semifreddo, the zabaione (whipped table side, another throwback) and the tiramisu.

Note: I was a guest of The Leopard at des Artistes. Opinions and a happily full belly were all my own.