Perbacco
243  E. 4th street, New York
Ph: 212 -253-2038 

Perbacco, enoteca e cucina, describe themselves as a casual restaurant and wine bar in the East Village. When we arrived there close to nine pm on a Friday evening the place was crowded and we had to wait  a while for our table to be cleared.

As I confess in my Travelblogue, New York, New York 2009 – Seven Days of Theatre, Food and Dance:  PART  III, I was tired and  very  hungry whe we arrived there  - it being three hours past my usual dinner time - and the loud conversational noise level and cramped table - where I managed to knock over my glass of wine - did little to make me relax. As well the low ambient lighting made it impossible for my tired eyes to read the menu.

It took a couple of glasses of  a  very mellow red wine to calm me down but eventually it worked and I managed to enjoy the rest of the evening. My caveat is that the combination of wine-soothed neurons and inability to clearly see the notes that I took, means that my descriptions may not be as precise as I would like.

We each decided to have an appetizer and Mike also wanted to try an appetizer pasta dish. 

For my appetizer I had a salad of thinly sliced peaches served with fresh basil and sweet Gorgonzola cheese and a 12 year old balsamic vinegar dressing. It was an excellent start to the meal, sweet and fresh, and I enjoyed the contrast of the gorgonzola with the peach .

Michael had figs stuffed with gorgonzola served with celery sticks. I tasted a bit - also very tasty.

He followed that with macarocini stuffed with rabbit, which Icould not resist tasting.  Very nice.

We decided to share a Porterhouse steak for two  served with potatoes and broccoli rabe (rapini). Fortunately we both enjoy a medium-rare steak and the steak was done to perfection. I really enjoyed it. However I thought the rapini was over cooked - the bitterness was quite apparent - and the potatoes were surprisingly undercooked.  

But the piece de resistance was the dessert - the chocolate Perbacco slider. As you can see it looks exactly like a hamburger plate but...  and here is where I am not exactly sure of what I noted down from Sasha, our friendly waiter's description..   The hamburger  is actually a  homemade angel cake with chocolate  mousse and white chocolate. I believe he said that the onions are caramelized peaches and the french fries were made from sliced apple.  The ketchup was a raspberry sauce. Regardless, the dessert was delicious and it looked exactly like a slider plate.

So after an inauspicious start to the evening mainly due to my hunger and fatigue, we ended up enjoying a good meal and I certainly felt much more relaxed and mellow as we strolled back to the apartment.