Friday Food: Rubirosa

For our second culinary adventure (our first was in Chinatown), Katie, Jim and I decided to try out Rubirosa. They decided they wanted to go somewhere in Little Italy, but left the choice of restaurant up to me. I did a quick search, and raves about their incredibly thin crust, vodka sauce pizza were enough to convince me that we had to try Rubirosa. We got there at 7pm on Wednesday night, and didn't have to wait for a table, which was a nice surprise. The restaurant is larger than it looked, with a big back room, but it's really cute and cozy.

We didn't spend too much time browsing the menu, especially when I mentioned the vodka sauce, and Katie made the brilliant suggestion that we add prosciutto. When the pizza came out, it was a masterpiece — huge, with enormous slices of super thin prosciutto, large dots of mozzarella and the thinnest crust I've ever had. As far as pizza crust is concerned, you can't go too thin in my opinion, and theirs was perfect. The vodka sauce was heavenly, and the prosciutto added just the right amount of saltiness and texture. We were afraid we weren't going to be able to finish the whole thing, but that didn't turn out to be such a problem. We had already decided to get dessert elsewhere, so the portions were just perfect.

I had scouted out potential dessert places before as well, but when we tried to go to Emma and Angie's Cannoli Shack (I mean, wouldn't you?) it turned out to be a tiny street cart that didn't look nearly as appealing as it sounded. Luckily, the alternate bakery I had found (La Bella Ferrara) happened to be directly across Mulberry street, and they had no shortage of delicious-looking goodies. I chose a chocolate-dipped, ricotta cannoli and a black-and-white cookie (for later). Everything they had looked (and smelled) amazing, and the cannoli was divine. I intended to save the cookie for lunch the next day, but it only made it until about 10am. It was my first authentic, New York black-and-white cookie and it tasted as good as it looked.

Even if it's slowly shrinking, and not 100% authentic, Little Italy is still an adorable place to go, especially at night. Mulberry Street looked very different without the crowds and carts of the Feast of San Gennaro Festival, but it was a much more pleasant walk — even if most of the restaurants had guys standing outside trying to get us to come in, praising their own food while trash-talking their neighbors. When we informed one of them that we had just eaten dinner, he didn't miss a beat and replied "Well you're all so skinny, you need to eat TWO dinners." He didn't know we were headed for cannoli (and cookies), but if we find another place as good as Rubirosa, I might seriously consider a double-dinner night in the near future.