Eataly

Sometimes, figuring out where you DON’T want to go is as important as determining where you DO want to go.

We’re fans of cooking shows on television. They’re easy, you can doze off and it really doesn’t matter (unless you’re actually making whatever they’re showing) and if you miss something you can go online and get the details.

We especially like Lydia, who is this kind of homely little Italian grandmother. She’s been on television for years, and some of her things are actually do-able, unlike some other shows that require ingredients that aren’t carried in the local grocery and, when found, cost more per ounce than gold, silver and platinum combined.

Mario Batali and Lydia's son have a new restaurant.....store......all wrapped together in New York City, called Eataly. We thought we’d go check it out. The concept sounded fund – it’s essentially a high end kitchen store with several restaurants incorporated throughout it.

What a major disappointment. This is Yuppie Italy, but not much more.

You go in, and it’s extremely confusing. This is in part because it’s huge. You wander through the masses of people (granted, it’s probably better to go at 10 am on a Thursday than 7 p.m. on any evening) in search of sustenance amongst the goo-gaws everywhere.

After a few minutes of wandering around, we kind of figured out how the restaurants were set up. Essentially, it was a big food court from a mall. Lots of different locations, with some kind of common seating areas.

Except some of them weren’t seating areas – they were standing areas.

Standing up to eat is fine for some things. A burger, pizza – food that is traditionally wolfed down on the way somewhere else.

Entrees at these places topped $40.00 a head. I got no qualms paying that for a good meal – but darned if I’m going to stand at a counter to eat it for that kind of money.

The other thing was that you had to buy different types of food from different locations (just like a food court) and had to pay them out separately. Thus, you got wine from one, fish from another, pasta from yet another. Given the lines at each of these places, the result could easily have been that the three of us had different meals at different times in different places.

After a brief confab to look at the options, we opted to go somewhere else. A place a few blocks away called “Friend of a Farmer” which was great.

And we got to take our coats off and sit down to eat.

http://eatalyny.com