Nonnas of the World — Restaurant in New York

Me and my wife were looking for a special place to celebrate or 16th anniversary, it was actually going to be our very first time with a chance to go by ourselfs having in house nanny help. We really wanted it to be special and wanted to go to a place to remember, then it came on us, lets go to the nonnas place, we have heard about it but never been there before, seems like perfect.

Our big night arrived and there we were, being welcomed at the entrance, accomodated and been explained that all the food is made fresh right in premises. We were so exited.

My wife ordered a Frizzanti (2), I ordered a Beer, and we went into ordering some appetizer, we settled for the prociuto and pinneapple, then we tried to order from the menu of the Nonna of the day, don't remember her name, but she was from Napoles, but we were informed that most of the menu wasn't ready and still in the oven (6pm) could be a 30-45minute wait. So we decided to order from the regular Italian menu, wife asked for the Porcetta and I asked for the Paccheri Ripiene, but again we were informed that those dishes weren't available yet. We tried a couple of other options just to find the same luck, I had to settle for a red lasagna and wifey choose the Branzino al Cartoccio.

We got our appetizer, some (seem like) can pinneapples covered with 4-6 sheets of prociuto, a bit disappointed when the pinneapple wasn't glazed on the grill or had any kind of preparation.  We were offered some focaccia and they serve it with a small side of grilled buttermilk squash and a side of coliflower. But everything was cold... and not just room temperature, but fridge cold.

Time for the main entrée, We are exited!!! My lasagna was pretty good, the tomato sauce was just right not everwhelming the flavor of the whole dish and still been able to taste the cheese and the... sausage? (Not sure), wife loved the garnish sweet potato on her fish, the fish itself was really fresh and well cook, but oh gosh those sweet potato fries!!!

For desert we got the Torta con Crema di Cannoli and espresso. A nice touch was they brought over some sambucca along to add to my coffe, but the cake was just dry and the cannoli flavor was inexistent.

Total bill with tip $150.00, this wasn't an issue on itself because we had the mojo that, if you are going out go out to expend, but paying for promises just didn't cut the bill this time.

We really had greater expectations about this place, we think that we went on an odd day, because it can't be that hundreds of people talk wonders about the food here but we didn't get it, so we will try again on another time. Other odd thing is that the 2 waitresses kept telling us different things...

Number one; the owner and the entire staff is extremely kind and also much fun to get to know. On our way there, running very late to our reservations, because of subway shut down and NYC parade causing road closures every way our Uber driver went, we just knew we were going to miss out on a lovely Nonna's dinner.

When we got there they had given our table away but after a few minutes looking at all the amazing movie and toy memorabilia, they gave us a seat at the bar. Completely unexpected and WOW, so kind! We honestly didn't expect to eat after missing our time frame, but I was over the top thrilled that I got to eat Nonna Maria's lasagna 😘🤌🏼 and it was just as scrumptious as my heart was expecting! Not only that, Nonna Maria was so lovely. 91 years old beautiful woman rocking the animal print looking no more than 70 years young and sweet sweet sweet. She loved my dimples and stuck a finger in them, just like my late grandmother would do, which nearly had me in tears. I loved her instantly and felt utterly warm and fuzzy just from getting to meet her.

Jody was a charming character with the most bad ass spectacles I have ever seen on a man! Had great conversations with him and all of the staff and learned a lot about the history of the restaurant.

Our server was Jamie, who was attentive and kind and gave me the recommendation of the Nutella cheesecake (YUM!) and met the other sweet Nonna (I didn't catch her name) but her rice on point. YES, rice!! I never knew rice could have that much flavor.

Also met funny, sweet, John who was another server who dared me to finish my lasagna after me boisterously proclaiming that I starved myself all day and WOULD eat every bite. 🤣 I couldn't even put down half because the portion was so large, however I did enjoy more lasagna at 6am the following morning and yet, still couldn't finish it.

Bottom line, if you want to just eat good food, there are 10s of 1000s of restaurants but if you want to leave feeling like you made connections and have a new family; this is the place you want to eat at.

Thank you to all who make this place function effortlessly, from the Nonnas to the back of the house doing the dishes and an extra shoutout to Jody and his amazing hostess for helping me make my 50th birthday celebration vacation by making space for us at your bar. I couldn't have asked for anything better that night. It was better than I could've ever wished.

Wish everyone much success but more importantly tons of...

I still haven't seen "Nonnas" (it's paying long-term rent on my Netflix queue, but I'll get to it, I swear), but knew enough about the story to appreciate my sister randomly inheriting a reservation here and deal with the inconvenience of schelpping to Staten Island on a school night with two other dining companions.

I wish I could say it was worth the trip, but it wasn't.

We started with the Burrata, which was generously portioned but dully seasoned. I'm no balsamic fan, but I would've welcomed some just to alleviate the snow white blandness.

We gave the Japanese nonna's Eggplant Dengaku dish a shot, but it was terrible. I generally like this classic Japanese dish, so it was very depressing to find it overly charred (huh?) with way too much bitter miso flavor and not enough sweetness to balance things out. The accompanying small dishes of vegetables were nice but nothing special. Ugh. My Japanese grandma would be rolling in her grave at the thought of me wasting $28 on this mess.

The Lasagna Della Nonna and the Coniglio della Casa were probably our two best dishes. Get these if you want hearty ragu and juicy rabbit respectively.

The Capuzzelle (Lamb's Head) turned plenty of (human) heads when it was placed on our table. I've eaten plenty of animal heads, so I wasn't put off by any of the obvious aspects of this dish. What annoyed me was that it just wasn't very well seasoned and lacked flavor. The meat we were able to pull off was tough and chewy with no discernible taste, which is quite something for normally gamey lamb. In fact, the accompanying vegetables were much more flavorful and after about 20 min of painful pulling and chewing, we gave up and just ate those.

Even the popular Banana Pudding was lacking. It was 90% cream with almost no actual banana, let alone pudding of cookies. I have no idea what happened in the assembling of this dessert, but I'm mad we paid $16 for what amounted to banana-tinged whipped cream.

Sigh. I can't believe I'm negatively reviewing a restaurant run by grandmas making homemade food. This place probably started as a great concept, but now it's just an overpriced disappointment--and unless you live on Staten Island, I don't think you need to travel this far to part...