Galli

"So, you’ve been tasked with planning a dinner for 8 people on an upcoming Saturday night. The toughest reservations are likely out of the question, and you don’t really want to spend your lunch break walk to Just Salad calling a bunch of places. Inevitably, you’re going to end up scrolling through OpenTable, looking at a bunch of Italian restaurants you’ve never heard of, Googling their menus, and not being sure if the one you settle on will cause your group to unseat you from the position of “Restaurant Chooser” moving forward. Should you find yourself in this situation, allow us to endorse Galli. Galli is a lively Italian spot in Soho with big tables and surprisingly good food. The cuisine is “Italian comfort,” which means a lot of red sauce classics, but this is Soho so it also means there’s a kale salad. By the time you get some grilled seafood, a pasta or two, a chicken parm, some bottles of wine, and the highly reasonable resulting check on your table, we bet your crew will have forgotten about that dramatic string of emails from earlier in the week about choosing a dinner location. Food Rundown Grilled Calamari Grilled calamari can be a total hit or miss - the appetizer here is a cooked-just-right hit. Kale Salad A kale salad topped with oranges, almonds, carrots, and avocado. You know the deal. Tegamino Galli succeeds in the parm department. We recommend this appetizer-size eggplant parm. Chicken Parm And for a group, you’ll want an entrée-sized chicken parm, which comes with a side of spaghetti. If it helps at all, we actually prefer the grilled version to the breaded. Penne Vodka Always a sure bet. Also: you can get any of the pastas gluten free, should that be your thing. Spaghetti Pesto One of those homestyle, very Italian, almost milky pesto sauces." - Hillary Reinsberg

"There’s a group dinner, it’s less than a week away, and members of the party have varying needs. One person’s gluten-free, while another is carb-loading for an upcoming marathon, and there’s a general sentiment about keeping costs reasonable while still getting drunk. “Should we just get a big table at The Smith in the East Village? That’ll probably be easy since Alison has to meet Sean in Soho later?” Well, Alison, what if you just have dinner at Galli in Soho? Sean will be so close by. The food here ranges from a totally solid kale salad to chicken parm with spaghetti, and a whole lot in between. And it’s always lively, without being out of control expensive either." - Bryan Kim, Hillary Reinsberg

"Soho isn’t an especially affordable neighborhood, but at Galli you and all your friends can spend around $40 on dinner, then move on to whatever it is you’re doing with the rest of your night. It’s also a pretty big space, and there’s a dining room in the back with exposed brick walls and a big communal table. So if you’re going out downtown and you need some solid Italian in a casual setting where you can drink a cocktail and enjoy the fact that your friends won’t complain about the prices, Galli is where you should go." - Hannah Albertine, Bryan Kim