Nicoletta

On Friday, Seth and I met up for dinner at Nicoletta, a Michael White pizza joint in the East Village. It opened up not too long ago and is much more casual thank Chef White’s other restaurants, Ai Fiori and Marea. Seth and I have been friends since college and I thought he was living in Hong Kong for the past few months because when we were sending emails back and forth, he said he moved to HK (Hell’s Kitchen, NOT Hong Kong). I just assumed he moved to Hong Kong because he was moving up in the fashion world and I thought he was asked to move there for manufacturing or something! At dinner, we were laughing about the confusion and promised to meet up more often.

We were there pretty early and sat next to Michael White’s daughter and his father. The restaurant is named after his daughter (her middle name is Nicoletta, which is such an adorable name) and she was pretty cute the entire night, especially when she went to the kitchen to get some soft-serve gelato from the chefs! Chef White’s dad is from Wisconsin and recommended that we order the Carbonara pizza, which is obviously what we ordered – how can you not order what the owner’s own father was ordering? We started with a small appetizer – the suppli’ (risotto, pimosale cheese and pork ragu):

I couldn’t really taste the risotto, more of the pork ragu, but they had a good crispy texture. For our main course, we initially wanted to split the pizza into two different pizzas (which is what Michael’s dad recommended) but then the waitress said we couldn’t do that…so we decided to order the Carbonara:

The Carbonara pizza comes with roasted cauliflower, green onion, pancetta, cheese and egg yolk drizzled across every piece. The tables all have these pizza holders that are built-in so the servers just bring the trays over and the pizza is perfectly presented at every table. I love carbonara pasta because of the creamy egg yolk that’s added at the end of cooking and the pizza at Nicoletta was just as good in a different presentation – the crust of the pizza was so crispy and slightly salted and the creaminess of the egg yolk really added to the flavor of the pizza. We both really enjoyed the pizza and couldn’t finish because it was also slightly heavy, so I’m glad we shared the pie.

Nicoletta also serves soft-serve gelato and you can add different toppings (50 cents each topping) and they all sounded really good, especially the stone fruit that was macerated in liqueur, but we were so stuffed that we had to pass. They deliver and have all types of pizzas (but you can also make your own pizza if you don’t like any of the toppings). A lot of people think the crust is too heavy, but I think it’s just right. You should try it out and save room for the gelato. We will definitely be back!