L'asso: Great group dining on a budget

The foodie's childhood friend was visiting from Singapore and we decided to take her for something NYC does best - Pizza! After much research, reading reviews and unsuccessfully calling several places to get a reservation for 10, we finally found place at L'asso. Some reviews even called it the best pizza in the city.

The first thing you notice when you enter is the huge brick oven behind the bar in the center of the restaurant. Since our table wasn't ready, we waited at the bar with a glass of wine. I don't know if it was the service or the company that evening, but conversation flowed uninterrupted and I don't remember when we moved from the bar to our table. I just remember the wine kept flowing, accompanied by some warm bread and olive oil to start and delicious pizzas that kept coming. Our waiter looked like a hippie from the 60's and said 'cheers' after every sentence.

We ordered three 29" pizzas for our party of 10 which were sufficient. You can split the 29" pizza in two toppings so we got to taste 5 toppings that evening including the only 2 meat choices on the menu. In the foodie's opinion, the best pizza of the night was the pizza mela with gorgonzola, apple and truffle oil. A very unusual and delicious combination for a topping. 

It might be presumptuous of us to call this as the best pizza in NYC (not having tasted Grimaldi's or Lombardi's yet), but they definitely know their pies. They also claim to have the only 'legal' Neopolitan pizza in the city. All the pizzas we ordered had thin crisp crust with carefully chosen combination of cheese and other toppings. We are definitely going there again! $18 per person including wine. The dim lighting and cozy ambience makes this place versatile for a filling romantic dinner as well as a big group. The price is and the service perfect. Highly recommended.

Food: 8/10

Service: 8/10

Ambience: 8/10

L'asso 41 Kenmare Street, NYC

Agozar: Good food, spotty service

Agozar! insists on including the '!' after its name. Apparently they want patrons to be exclamatory when they take the name. Little do they know that patrons also have to do it to get any kind of service to their table. Admittedly, it is hard to find a place at any decent Manhattan restaurant for a large group of people (15 people that evening). This Cuban place is rated highly for its group dining experience by Citysearch NYC. We had to wait till the staff joined our tables together even though the entire party arrived on time (a feat in itself). There was also no space between the table and the wall, so the people who got in first had no way of getting out till the whole row got up. We had to shuffle the tables around ourselves to provide a way to the stuck and in the process ended up spilling drinks, water and breaking 3 glasses in the process.

We were ordering from a fixed-price party menu ($30) which didn't have the ropa vieja, although it appeared on the a-la-carte menu, the cheaper fixed-price menu ($25- less choice) and the more expensive menu ($35- more choice). We had to ask for chips and salsa after we were sitting around for 15 minutes without service. Finally, after an hour, our waiter was finally ready to take our appetizer and entree orders. The appetizers were excellent, particularly the shrimp in garlic sauce, where the flavorful sauce was unlike what the foodie tasted anywhere. The mojito pitchers were potent and did their job well. The service was lacking again and we spent a lot of time between the appetizers and entrees. The entrees finally came out, almost all of them together. The foodie had the shrimp enchillados and the photographer took the skirt steak. The chicken rice was kind of dry and there was only a hint of chimichuri sauce on the steak. The vegetarian paella was good. We should mention that this is one of the few restaurants that actually gives vegetarians a choice better than cold salads.

A sign of good service is when you hardly notice the service at all. It was certainly not the case at our table at Agozar. We had to ask for silverware and for our glasses to be re-filled with water. The waiter seemed to have a high level of complacence, probably due to the fact that his 20% gratuity would be added to the bill regardless of what he did/ didn't do. The place is friendly, but one expects much better service from a place where you spend $57 per person.

We recommend the food at Agozar but encourage you to look at other places for big groups.

Food: 8/10

Service: 5/10

Ambience: 7/10

Agozar! 324 Bowery, New York City 10012