Amici Ristorante — Restaurant in New York

Amici is an Italian restaurant in the district of Little Italy in lower Manhattan. While walking past the restaurant, I was greeted by a host who told us to try Amici. I then asked if they serve fresh handmade egg pasta, and they told me they did. I decided to give it a shot and ordered a rigatoni amatriciana at 20 USD. I also made sure to double check with the server that I was ordering fresh egg rigatoni. When the food came and I took a bite into the pasta, I was caught by surprise when I realized that the pasta was not fresh egg pasta and instead dried semolina pasta. At the end of the meal, I asked the server again if she was sure that the rigatoni is fresh handmade egg pasta. She hesitated then said “yes of course it is, everything in the kitchen is handmade” in a rude manner. To this day, I cannot believe the restaurant staff had the audacity to be dishonest to their customers. It was a $20 meal plus tax with an automatic 20% gratuity, which for the quality of service I received, was ridiculous. Service aside, the food was mediocre at best. The meal began with some stale bread with a cheap balsamic vinegar and olive oil dip. The bread was practically inedible and unpleasant to eat. When the amatriciana came, the prosciutto was extremely thin and unevenly sliced. The sauce was overpowered by onions, overly acidic, and bland. Some basil in the sauce would also enhance the flavor. Contrary to the advertisements and slogans on the website and front of the restaurant , Amici is far from authentic Italian as they claim to be and proved to be a disappointing experience. It is merely a tourist trap.

EDIT: For those reading this, this is an honest review and I have receipts and evidence of my experience at Amici. I went to Amici during my 6 day stay at New York and I have gone to a couple of great restaurants. Amici was just not one of them. In addition, it was not the menu that said that this restaurant serves fresh pasta, it was the staff. I simply asked if the pasta served is house made egg pasta and they told me it was when it was really not. Then when I confronted the server to ask her about it, she persisted to defensively say that everything is fresh including the pasta. The difference between semolina past and fresh egg pasta is very obvious. I also see other reviews from others where veal was ordered but customers were given pork and told that it was veal. It was literally white, so I cannot believe that the restaurant has the audacity to lie to its customers. On the other hand, I try to be as honest and polite as possible and have no reason and no time to write a poor review on an experience I never had. Writing food reviews is a hobby of mine and I try to be as honest as I can, only providing constructive criticism. Calling a customer a liar is no way to treat a customer. This only reflects and validates the attitude I described that I received from the server and staff at Amici. Lastly, I see that on previous poor reviews from other customers, the owner who is responding to posts denies all allegations and continues to claim that people have the wrong restaurant and address. I double checked the address and I believe that I have...

i used to come here with my dad back in 2019, and i remember it being very good, so i decided to revisit with my partner. it was a very disappointing experience and i will not be returning.

first, we ordered the rice balls which were advertised to have sweet sausage and cheese inside of them. i work as a chef and i can absolutely tell when something came straight out of a freezer, and these absolutely did. they tasted freezer burnt and the flavor of the sausage and cheese was completely missing. four very small frozen rice balls for $16 was probably the biggest letdown of the experience.

i got the penne al a vodka and my partner got the spaghetti bolognese. it cost $8 extra to add grilled chicken to the penne al a vodka, and the chicken was very dry and had an almost starchy texture. the pasta was undercooked (not al dente, undercooked), but the sauce was slightly redeeming. i also found one stray rigatoni noodle which i found to be strange. not sure how that happened. the spaghetti bolognese was… odd. the spaghetti was even more undercooked than the penne was, very overly chewy, and the bolognese sauce was completely overpowering with a weird pepper flavor? it was very strange.

i would also like to mention that where we were seated, there was a freezer at the end of the kitchen that i could see. at one point, i watched one of the chefs take out what looked like frozen individual portions of pasta. so it seems that they’re not even trying to hide that their food is frozen.

the bill was $60, not including tip. the service was just okay, except for the kind man at the front door. it’s really sad to see a restaurant that i once liked become what seems to be just another little italy tourist trap....

I usually don’t write reviews of restaurants and I have never been to a place where I truly thought it deserved one-star but Amici Ristorante broke me. Where do I even begin? The service was very slow, our first item was the arancini, which took about 15 minutes to come out. Then, the next two items, a salad and shrimp scampi took about 45 minutes to come. On top of the slow service, the food quality was very low. The arancini was nothing special but not bad. However, the arugula in the salad was very bitter and the added-on chicken (which was an extra $8 dollars for an originally $12 salad) was bland and lifeless. The linguini tasted like old pre-made pasta. The shrimp was alright but one of my pieces still had half of its shell on, making me wonder what took so long with the pasta? It was clearly not made with a lot of care. I was recommended this place by my so-called “friend,” whom I wont be asking recommendations from anymore. Finally, after everything bad that happened, the bill arrived. I looked at the bill to see a forced gratuity of 20%, which caught me off guard considering it was only my girlfriend and I. To reiterate, I never EVER write reviews, but Amici was such a poor experience, do not let the reviews trick you. I would never wish this place to my...