Restaurant review: Carmine's

In honor of my beloved husband's 35th birthday this past Thursday, my mom, sister, and I took him out to Carmine's for dinner on Friday night. Carmine's is near the top of my "oldies-but-goodies" list. My family has been going there for birthdays, family gatherings, and miscellaneous special occasions for over fifteen years. In the last two years alone, we've gone there to celebrate my mother-in-law's 70th birthday and my sister's "last supper" before she moved to London. We also considered it for our wedding rehearsal dinner, but it is very unlikely that I would have fit into my wedding dress if we had ended up there. (In case you're interested, Judd's parents ended up hosting a much less gluttonous and much more elegant and geographically convenient post-rehearsal dinner for us at Giovanni Venti Cinque, just a few blocks from the church where we got married.)

Four is probably the fewest number of diners that sit down to eat at Carmine's with a straight face. That's because they serve hearty Italian food in gigantic "family-sized" portions. Each dish easily serves 4 - 6 people. So get ready to laugh when you hear what we ordered.

We started with THREE appetizers:

Caesar salad,

fried zucchini, and

stuffed mushrooms.

All three were delicious. I don't always love Caesar salad, but Carmine's makes a great one. The mushrooms, all fifteen of them, had a spicy sausage-based stuffing. And who doesn't love fried zucchini? But in retrospect, we shouldn't have ordered that obscene pile of crispy fried zucchini pieces. It was really just too much. That's what happens when hungry people can't decide on which appetizer to order.

For our entrees, we shared chicken parmesan and rigatoni country style (rigatoni with broccoli, cannellini beans, sausage, and onions) - my personal favorite of their many pasta dishes. I rarely order chicken parmesan since it seems like the kind of thing I could make myself if I really wanted to or even order a perfectly fine version of it from a pizzeria. But it was wonderful - possibly even the best I've ever had. Their shrimp parmesan is also delicious, for future reference.

Even though we were all holding our stomachs and groaning after making a serious dent in enough food to feed a small army, we still ordered a tartufo (chocolate covered ball of ice cream) for dessert so Judd could have a candle to blow out.

Hey - at least we didn't order this dessert, which they call the "Titanic."

There are several downsides to eating at Carmine's. First and foremost: they don't take reservations for parties smaller than six. And since it's always a MADHOUSE in there, that can lead to a long wait for a table. My advice is to get there as early as you can or go on a weeknight. Second: the B & T crowd has heard about Carmine's massive servings of delicious and reasonably priced food. And finally: it is nearly impossible to leave Carmine's doors without feeling so full you might never eat again. And that's even if you're carrying a large bag of leftovers. It happens to me every time. But it's loud (borderline raucous) and fun inside and the food is consistently really wonderful.

I have no idea how many hundreds of people must work in the kitchen at Carmine's to generate the volume of food they serve every night, or how many thousands of calories I manage to consume each time I eat there, but I can't wait to go back. Especially with the smartest, funniest, kindest, cutest, and most all-around wonderful man I know, whom I'm lucky enough to call my husband. Happy birthday, Judd!

***

Details:

Carmine's Upper West Side

2450 Broadway (between 90th and 91st Streets)

New York, New York

(212) 362-2200

Dinner for four + leftovers for ten: ~$200