Eataly

This post is mostly for the out-of-towners, because judging from the crowds at Eataly, every New Yorker has already visited at least once since the opening day on August 31. (I've paid four visits and may pay another this evening.) Just in case you're not familiar, Eataly is a huge gourmet Italian market with eight separate restaurants inside focusing on different dishes like meat, pasta, pizza, vegetables, and fish. Its Italian mission make it more focused than the Plaza Food Hall, which aims at something similar.

I wanted to see if the New York store was exactly like the one in Torino. One main difference is that there's no Guido per Eataly, -the cutting-edge "fancy" restaurant on the bottom floor of the Torino store. Instead, there's Manzo, which focuses on Italian meats. Also, the produce and much of the dairy (except a wealth of cheeses like organic scamorza, saffron sheep's cheese, and buffalo blue) is necessarily local - I haven't tried the gelato yet, but I plan to, of course!

Today, there was a 30-minute wait for the pizza, so I sat on a barstool at Manzo. The six-course tasting menu wasn't available, but there was an appetizing display case of six different meats. I started with a seasonal salad that burst with freshness and taste. A champagne vinaigrette with a touch of mustard dressed a beautiful plate of red, yellow and green tomatoes, grilled baby zucchini, pattypan squash, and wax and green beans over a heap of arugula and toasted hazelnuts. Shavings of parmigiano Reggiano completed the dish. Then I dove into the robiola tortelloni. A pile of salty pancetta and sauteed chanterelles lay atop six hefty egg pasta pockets in a butter sauce. When I cut into a raviolo with my fork, the creamy, pungent robiola oozed out like egg yolk.

I have yet to visit the other restaurants, but I have made use of the coffee bar (it has the most extensive menu of coffee drinks in the city, including the famous Piedmontese bicerin) with its sumptuous apricot croissants. I've sampled Luca Montersini's tirati su and salted peanut/caramel tiramisu. I've also bought a fair amount of Venchi chocolates, rustic spelt bread, farro olive oil cookies, heirloom tomatoes, olive oil, and stracciatella from the mozzarella bar.

Two requests: can they please offer pizza to go, and can lunch be served past 2 pm? It seemed as though the whole place kind of closed down then - the mozzarella bar, with all of its delicious burrata and bocconcini, temporarily disappeared.

Eataly: 200 5th Ave.