Babbo

Babbo
110 Waverly Place
New York, NY 10011

Had dinner at Babbo with a small group of friends yesterday evening. The hype for this restaurant may have died down a bit, but making reservations certainly didn't seem to be the case. To get reservations, you have to call one month in advance to the day at exactly 10am. Call any later and the phone line will be busy and you will get stuck with a very early or late time slot.

We arrived at 5:45pm for our Sunday evening reservation and the place was already filling up quickly. Babbo is a fairly fancy restaurant and their dress code is smart dressy. For the ladies, nice jeans are ok. Definitely better to dress up than look and feel underdressed. For gentlemen, a jacket and tie are not required though it's not unusual. Coats can not be hung on the backs of chairs so coat check may sometimes be required. Lucky for me, I sat on a bench against the wall so I just sat with my coat tucked behind me.

My friends and I had great expectations for the food. After all this is Mario Batali's place.

We were given a free starter - chickpeas with olives on toasted bread.

Then we had the grilled octopus and appetizer size goose liver ravioli.

The grilled octopus was just ok. The goose liver ravioli was excellent and more than made up for the mediocre octo.

For our main course, we had the following:

Lobster spaghettini - one pound lobster does not mean one pound of lobster meat. The tomato sauce on the pasta was done perfectly! Though nothing spectacular either.

Duck - super dry! Don't recommend this dish.

Rabbit - this was an interesting dish, but nothing to write home about either.

Beef cheek ravioli - this was delicious! The pasta was very well made and filled with flavor. Highly recommend! This dish is popular for a reason.

We were too full for dessert and nothing really stood out on the menu. Luckily we didn't order dessert because we were served cookies. A bit of sugar was just perfect to end the meal.

Overall, it was a delicious meal but it still fell a bit short of my expectations from a top-chef owned restaurant. Service was excellent and staff was very courteous and professional. I still recommend coming to Babbo, but stick with the pasta and go elsewhere for dessert.

Envirosax Obsession

My latest obsession are Envirosax's eco-friendly, reusable bags. They are light, super durable, and there is a wide variety of really fun and cute graphic designs. I bought the Marina series, which contains 5 nautical themed bags.

These bags are perfect to take on a beach vacation or just to use in regular day-to-day life. The Marina designs come in a variety of maritime hues and offer ornate seafaring patterns, some of them even reminiscent of Moroccan tiles. 

Bag Dimensions (unrolled): 50cm x 42cm 
Bag Dimensions (in pouch): 10cm x 4.5cm Bag 
Weight: 40g 

In addition to graphic series, Envirosax also has slingsax and minisax, organic series, and kids series. Some of my favorite kids designs include Cars, Circus, Babuschka, and To the Moon.

Envirosax boasts that these bags can hold up to 44lbs, are water resistant, and fully washable. I don't know if these bags can really hold 44lbs and I hope I never have to carry 44lbs worth of weight in these bags. Even if the bags survive, I don't think my arms will. I will say however, that the quality of the material for these bags is much more durable than other re-usable bags I have used. Envirosax bags are water resistant, but I would say only to a certain degree. I have also washed them by hand and there was no color bleeding or fading. 

Overall, I am extremely happy with my Envirosax bags and encourage everyone to use these convenient, easy alternatives to plastic bags. For only $8.95 per bag, it's very tempting to collect them all.  These bags also make great gifts! I would suggest checking Ebay, Amazon, and brightandbold.com for lower prices.