Pasta Corner 53rd

Can This French-Owned Restaurant Make Italian Pasta? Mais Non | Eater NY

"Located at 9 East 53rd Street just east of 5th Avenue, the newcomer is the project of French pop singer Matt Pokora, actor-rapper Christina Milian, and baker Vincent Benoliel, and it has branches in Los Angeles, Paris, and Lille. Through the front window you can see neon slogans on the walls of the deep, narrow space; a sales counter sells salami, cheeses, fresh pastas, desserts, jars of the house tomato sauce, and croissants made with Normandy butter, while an L-shaped counter looks into an open kitchen where servings of pasta line up before giant bubbling pots. The menu offers nine antipasti and over 20 fixed combinations of fresh pasta and sauce (no mix-and-match), but the concept often fails because fresh pasta can’t be cooked al dente for sauces that require dry pasta: the spaghetti carbonara ($21) was a prime example, a very soft spaghetti overwhelmed by the thickest sauce imaginable—egg yolk, heavy cream, pancetta, and Parmigiano—resulting in a gluey mess. I tried penne arrabbiata ($16), where the pasta was acceptable but the sauce tasted like unsalted, chile-less pureed tomatoes—the same bland flavor I found in the “gaspacho” appetizer—and the garlic bread was decent while the veal-and-beef meatballs were plain and drowned in that same tomato sauce. There are lots of add-ons (burrata for $5) and extravagant options—30 grams of Osetra caviar on lemon cream spaghetti for $60 or truffles and black truffle paste in a mushroom-and-crème-fraîche lasagna ($29)—that often feel mismatched with the execution. The best pasta I had was the Brooklyn favorite tagliatelle alle vongole ($29), which used Manila clams and lacked the spicy heat promised but was still the strongest dish; my other highlight was a New York–style cheesecake ($8) with a thick graham-cracker crust and sweet-tangy filling. If you order the tagliatelle alle vongole and a slice of cheesecake you could go away happy; otherwise you may wonder how a French-identified place could get pasta so wrong." - Robert Sietsema