Stella 34 Trattoria, Midtown West

One very important lesson we learned from our recent reunion is that you should not wait until the last minute to make a reservation for table of twelve. It’s always tricky making decisions as a group, but I’m glad I went ahead and booked something… anything to make sure we wouldn’t be stuck in the cold and hangry.

I went through nine (yes, nine!) restaurants on our list before scoring a reservation for twelve at Stella 34 Trattoria. With Restaurant Week in full swing, the odds were not in our favor. To be honest, I was pretty skeptical of this place since it’s inside Macy’s. When I first glanced at the menu, it seemed a bit overpriced. However, the quality of the food was good. We also got the best table in the house!

Normally, I would tear up my bread to dip in in olive oil, but the cute cans of olive oil convinced me to drizzle directly on my bread. The sesame bread was good.

Unfortunately, there were no vegetarian entrees on the Restaurant Week menu, so I just ordered a la carte. John and I shared the Padron Peppers ($7) to start. Tasty peppers, but it was too heavy on the citrus salt. I’m a fan of the napkins, by the way.

John ordered the Margherita Pizza ($16). The classic combination of tomato, mozzarella, basil, and pecorino romano. Looked pretty good, but I didn’t try it.

I ordered the Linguine ai Funghi ($21), which had mushroom brodetto, wild mushrooms, rainbow swiss chard, and stracciatella. The pasta was a bit firm for my taste, but the large juicy mushrooms were tasty. I almost mistook the stracciatella for a weirdly shaped poached egg at first. It added a nice richness to the dish.

I’ve been on a dessert kick lately and couldn’t pass on something sweet even though I was pretty full from my entree. The Tartufo was tempting, but I ended up getting the chocolate mousse with blood orange gelato ($9) instead. Note: that is not a tomato, but a thin slice of blood orange! The tartness and acidity of the blood orange balanced the richness of the chocolate very well. Plenty of dessert for two people.

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