La Devozione — Restaurant in New York

Pastificio di martino is one of many brands selling Gragnano pasta - considered the champagne of pastas! A claim I can stand by. This cool restaurant sits inside a pasta shop in Chelsea Market and is known for its tasting menu.

You can only get reservations for the “oval” chef counter for the tasting menu for $165. But something about a multi course pasta tasting menu gave me pause as my stomach wouldn’t be able to handle it. So we took the chance of walking in and getting a seat for the a la carte section of the restaurant. The setup is like communal tables at many restaurants spread among a pasta shop. The menu is expansive and I wanted to order everything.

All the pastas were Al dente and I couldn’t stop marveling at how well they were cooked. Perfection!!

We ordered: Fritti di Pasta - 8/10 this one is a bit interesting as you get 3 different stuffed fried pastas. Eggplant, Ricotta, Cod. Great flavors overall but something about deep fried pasta wasn’t screaming Authentic Italian food to me. Lollipop di macaroni - 10/10 this is the only way I want Macaroni to be served to me. The truffle flavors really added a pop to the Mac and cheese and the accompanying sauce was decadent!! La devozione - 20/10 there have been very few places that have wowed me with their spaghetti in tomato sauce. Either the sauce isn’t the right proportion to the spaghetti or the flavors in the tomatoes don’t hit right. The name sake dish is perfection. Probably the best dish on the menu and while my partner ordered this, I couldn’t help myself from stealing from her plate all night!! Vermicelli Cacio e Pepe - 15/10 I usually judge an Italian restaurant by how well their cacio e Pepe is. As sad as I am that it was not better than the La Devozione, the pasta is one of the best Cacio e Pepe you can find in the city. My nit here is that they call it vermicelli but the pasta is thicker than the spaghetti. I’d probably put it up there with Antica Pesa (which is a branch of the Roman Michelin star restaurant and cooks Cacio Pepe to perfection). Iforgot the name of my drink (something ai fiori which tasted like a floral spritz and highly recommend it!!)

Overall this is one of the top Italian meals I’ve had in recent memory and highly recommend checking it out! We’re going to come back and this time come for the tasting menu!

It’s recently opened and has lots of availability on Resy but I expect it to get a Michelin star of its own by this time next year!

Pro-tip: come a bit later towards 8pm as the market closes down and it’s easier to find tables.

Pro-tip: my partner mentioned you can get their pasta to go and walk around Chelsea market (in case you don’t get their table)

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Update 5/7 We ended up coming here for the tasting menu for dinner. You get 7 courses and they switch things around if you let them know that you’re vegetarian. Their sommelier also recommended some incredible wines to go along with the food which made this experience fantastic.

Onto the food; it is quite difficult imo to create 7 different and unique pasta dishes and so that shows up in the lineup. For starters, all the dishes are presented beautifully. The food and the pasta are still incredible and the pasta is cooked to perfection.

However I felt like some of the dishes got a little too cute. The chickpea pasta with a tahini purée (margarita 1000 nights) could be replaced with something else.

The spaghetti aglio e olio, spaghettini lemon and la devozione were my favorite. The beetroot pasta served in a wine glass was a nice touch for experience.

The passion fruit dessert was unique as I had never tried hazelnut and passion fruit mixed together for this cross flavor profile.

Finally they leave you with a box of goodies which is a nice touch for your breakfast next day.

Overall, while the experience and opportunity to try 7-8 dishes is unique and fun, the real experience and joy of this place is to walk in and have the a la carte menu where you can have your favorite dishes in...

Basically, I went here for a beautiful experience. I have asked for an Italian beverage when they have gave me what I have asked for. Peroni beer was unacceptable. It basically taste like a blue moon so I asked for what I paid for, and he kindly after arguing me the manager that he believed that he gave me the right beverage after conversation with his team he had to apologize to me and give me a second chance with a beer that was not what I was expecting and still argue with me that this was the beer I was expecting when he was completely wrong, so I felt uncomfortable in this restaurant expecting a quality Italian restaurant when clearly he did not know I excuse myself in the table for his room matter for him to charge me for a beer that was clearly wasn’t what I asked for he made me feel like a thumb and told me to leave his restaurant. Remind you to pay for a beer that had a fly inside it and expect me to be so appreciating how he does business he had to call security and security basically shot him down try to humiliate me and his own restaurant expected me to pay $22.50 for the mess up he made I’m truly so took it for a ride however, a manager doesn’t know how to treat his customers to the face telling me two times that he is a blown out Italian that knows his beer and insult me in 10 ways that I don’t appreciate his response to make me pay for something that I did not accept and wanted a full experience security hundred percent see where I was coming from and he was so ignorant to overlook the way he was and wanted to teach me a lesson when he was 100% wrong I would not trust this restaurant I would never come back here strongly because of the fact that he want me to pay for beverages that had a insect inside a beer that he accuse me that I put there in the first place he is not a man or a person That I would trust, and that is the face of this restaurant to make my full experience He’s unacceptable and very rude and he put me in a situation where he made me feel like I did not know what I was talking about. It took security to receive my reimbursement back after all the hassle he made me feel the whole time sitting there for 40 minutes . I can’t stress enough the way I feel about this restaurant and what it says about what his employees to give me the unsatisfaction the way he did I will not be coming back to this experience. I am very unsatisfaction about how he ruined my day and my experience when this could’ve been dealt with a kindly matter, he pretty much feels. I put this fly into my beer. That was nothing what I asked for people like him should be accountable for. A very unsatisfied customer I am with my family of seven never experienced nothing like this and I would never come back to this restaurant if...

I have never written a bad review in my life. However, I feel obligated to share what was genuinely the WORST meal of my life. If I could rate this restaurant less than a one star then I would. My friend and I had ordered the 4 course sampling menu and were extremely disappointed with every single course. Every single pasta was cooked “Al dente” but in reality raw and unpleasantly chewy. I know it’s a sampling but the portion sizes were CRIMINALLY small for the price. The “appetizer” was a long breadstick that tasted like a cracker and airplane snack. The next appetizer was a single fried pasta shell with an oyster and lemon foam in it. It genuinely makes me gag thinking about it. The first course was a seafood spaghetti that’s sauce was not bad The second course was inedible after the first bite. Barely-cooked spaghetti with a green onion puree and fried canned tuna on top. It was, for lack of better words, horrid. It was as if you took a bite of the smell of a fish market. The third course was, once again, barely-cooked pasta in a rabbit ragu with fried olive flakes on top. I’m not an olive person and thought that was why I didn’t enjoy it but my friend who was an avid olive lover could not stand it. The fourth course was a regular tomato sauce that wasn’t bad nor special but once again the pasta itself had been like flash boiled and it was gross. To finish the meal, we were served a dessert that was basically the lemon foam from the appetizer on top of grapefruit. All of these horrid dishes and one drink cost us $400 total. Absolute scam. Save your money and go elsewhere. I feel sick thinking...