Osteria Morini

After a wonderful visit to the Doughnut Plant, Ken and I went to brunch at Osteria Morini, Michael White’s newest restaurant in New York:

The last time we walked by the restaurant we were on our way to La Esquina…but I made a mental note to keep a look out for reviews; a couple friends raved about their meals at Morini and their garganelli pasta made it to Sam Sifton’s 15 best dishes of 2010 so I figured we should go as soon as our schedules permitted. We arrived at the restaurant at noon – they were still setting up for brunch. The restaurant is much more casual than Michael White’s other restaurants, ALTO, Marea, and Convivio; they have a community table, no white tablecloths, and mismatched chairs:

We started off with some olive bread and regular rustic bread:

For our appetizer, we ordered their mozzarella – bufala mozzarella, citrus segments, rosemary oil, saba:

I’m usually not a huge fan of ordering mozzarella at restaurants (why bother if you can buy it at a grocery store) but there’s something really special about the bufala mozzarella that’s served at Marea and I figured it would be similarly creamy and delicious at Morini. The mozzarella was very similar to Marea’s, but it was also oddly sweet (not from the orange segments, either).

We decided against ordering the garganelli and ordered the tortellini with duck liver mousse instead:

I haven’t had a cream-based pasta sauce in quite some time because it’s usually too heavy and I’m such a huge fan of tomato sauce, but this creamy pasta with duck liver mousse was decadent yet light. After brunch, Ken said he thought lunch was really light which surprised me since we ate doughnuts, creamy pasta, and duck liver.

We shared the branzino – grilled mediterranean sea bass, insalata mista, salsa verde:

I enjoyed the branzino except I ended up getting some strange types of bones that really ruined my last couple of bites. The bones weren’t long like normal fish bones, instead, they were strange little pellets that I’ve never seen in fish before.

Ken and I enjoyed my lunch experience at Osteria Morini and definitely plan on returning for dinner – it might be our favorite Michael White restaurant because it’s a more casual setting, the service is better than Marea (although that’s not difficult considering I’ve had better service at McDonald’s than Marea), and the pasta is just as great.