4 /5 ESB NYC: Bit of a mixed bag here. The room is cool, chill vibes, good music and lighting and professional, friendly service. We had the “surprise” 6 course tasting menu. There was definitely a problem in the kitchen because there were some extremely long delays between courses, our meal took 2 1/2 hours.
We started with the complimentary focaccia, delicious and we went for the ricotta upcharge, $10 for 2 tablespoons of ricotta. Not sure the value proposition was there.
Flavors were generally on point, the eggplant with some charred greens was OK but didn’t love it. Favorite dish was the crab agnolotti, scrumptious.
The bucatini served before that was perfectly cooked, but was excessively salty, apparently because of the capers as we mentioned the issue to the server. However, it definitely tasted like someone slipped with the salt shaker. Our main was a kind of disappointing plate of mini meatballs in a sweet and savory sauce. Interesting but for $129 menu maybe we expected more than mini meatballs.
Dessert was a scoop of peach and Prosecco sorbet, refreshing, but a little bit underwhelming for dessert on a tasting menu. I guess as I am writing this I kind of wanted to like it more than I actually ended up liking it.
