Trattoria dopo Teatro

We ended up at this Broadway haunt after arriving in NY at 9:15pm. We asked our Italian bellhop to recommend something which would still be serving dinner, and he whipped out a stack of cards from the restaurant -- obviously a relative works there. He even called ahead to make sure that we wouldn't stray (there were plenty of tables at 9:30, which was late for regular diners and too early for the post-theater crowd).

Kris ordered a salad, which was fine, but my antipasto misto plate was distinctly uneven in quality. Her entree, pasta squares in a boar sauce, was excellent, but I made the mistake of ordering the restaurant's eponymous dish, a giant raviolo of lobster and mushrooms. While quite attractive, the filling was all from frozen ingredients and bland.

Dessert made up for any main course disappointments, though: the tiramisu was very authentically made, and the ricotta cheesecake was superb, putting me in mind of one I had in Milan. Best of all was their grappa collection, including more than 30 different grappas. I, of course, managed to select the only grappa on the list which was missing, and we got to watch an elaborate pantomime while three staff members examined every bottle on the shelf looking for it. To console me, a waiter offered a free glass of an unusual grappa they'd recently received: chamomile grappa. This was the most peculiar thing, somehow managing to taste both distinctly like a sweet grappa and like chamomile tea at the same time.

Un Deux Trois, next door, is also reputed to be a good after-theater option.