Terre| Pasta & Natural wine — Restaurant in New York

We came here for a friday date night yesterday and wanted to try a new Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. As advertised you enter into a rustic and cozy environment being greeted by a friendly Italian waiter who sat us right away in the back. Made us feel comfortable anticipating a great dining experience.

The choice in seating was not great. The place was fairly empty and we sat at the table right next to the where the staff comes to grab additional glasses- staff had to reach over us three times during our dinner to grab things. Also the table is on way to the only toilet and we constantly kept getting bumped. Could have seated us somewhere else or get rid of that table location. At one point a mom with her two kids hoisted a children's bike over our heads. Bringing a bike inside a coffee shop is a questionable choice let alone a small restaurant- should not be tolerated.

The selection of natural wines sounded impressive at first, but when you have to use a spin board based on color and feelings was a bit of a gimmick. For over $20/glass I would definitely suggest a better system otherwise felt a bit cheated for not having more affordable options to go with dinner. My girlfriend wanted a pinot noir which tasted like it has been expired or sat out for days. Mine was an orange wine which I liked. It was not the greatest thing in the world but definitely not bad.

The food. It may have been an off night, but this was literally the worst Italian food we had. For the prices and reviews we were excited to eat here. We started out with the caprese salad. It had 4 chunks of mozzarella with tomatoes so thin they were cut like sashimi. The basil acted more like a garnish and there was little to no balsamic added. Had we known the rest of the meal would get worse I would have said something about eating this cheese sushi.

The eggplant parm- flavor wise it was actually quite nice. The issue was it was COLD and borderline frozen. The first bite was cold which I thought maybe something the chef did intentionally, but the second bite felt way more frozen like. We asked the waiter if it was meant to be served cold and he said no and was extremely apologetic. The manager said this was a new item on their menu, How does a new item excuse it from not being hot?

Finally the pasta- my girlfriend got the ghocchetti which was mushy and overcooked. I got the tonnarelli which was hard and undercooled. Flavor wise they were fine but we had to send the plates back which I am sure my grandmother rolled in her grave when I did that. The staff were nice enough to comp the pasts and eggplant. Between the wines and salad the bill was still over $70 plus tip.

Overall the place and people are amazing, but the food was absolutely...

I recognize that making a reservation for a party of 8 for a Friday night is a challenging ask for any restaurant. But some things about my experience at Terre grated on me. I reserved for our group, and we arrived on time. We were seated at the rear, directly under speakers, and it took quite some time for a server to take our drinks order. When the server came to the table, he noticed it was too loud for even him to be heard over the music, so he left to lower the volume, which took more time. He agreed to keep the volume low for the whole meal. He shared the specials, although he did not mention any prices (when the bill came, I was shocked that the balsamic vinegar tasting was $45 — steep for any appetizer, as precious as the ingredients may be. Knowing the price beforehand would have been nice and is customary at most restaurants). When placing our drinks order, we were prepared to make a selection from the wine list, but the server insisted on bringing over two bottles to taste. Our reservation happened to fall on International Women's Day, and our party was seven women of color and one white man. The server assumed that the white man would be the one tasting the wine, which was pretty outrageous, since he was hardly the guest of honor or the one in charge! We corrected his assumption. Still more time elapsed before we were even able order appetizers. In that time, the music's volume returned to its loud level — the server said "other diners" wanted it loud. When our appetizers arrived, three in our party had NO cutlery and we had to wave our arms wildly for some time to get a server's attention. By the time the missing cutlery arrived, the appetizers had been eaten with fingers, unfortunately. Our pasta mains were hit or miss. The cacio e pepe was flavorful, but I ordered the tagliolino with venison that was so bland and underseasoned. Of course it took time for requested salt and pepper to reach the table. I will say, the restaurant did accommodate gluten allergies very well. In all, the meal ended up taking about 3 hours. I'm glad the restaurant was able to accommodate us at all, since a party of eight is large and unwieldy, but the experience did not inspire me to make...

I was honestly extremely disappointed with this place. I booked it for Valentine’s Day, and while the ambiance was nice and the service was very good, the food was pretty boring and bland. While I’d seen that this place was expensive, I was happy to pay the hefty $40 (vegetarian) pasta dishes if it meant I was getting a phenomenal meal. Instead, I got what I think had $15 value. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t phenomenal. My partner and I each got a glass of wine, we split a cheese plate, each had a pasta dish and split a dessert. This came out to $240 after tax and tip (again, I wouldn’t have minded this if everything had been sensational). I must say, the wine was very good. We were unsure about what to get, so our waiter asked what we liked, brought two bottles over and we got to choose which we preferred (no charge for the tasting). The cheese plate wasn’t bad, but it was uninspired. The bread was good, the cheese was mid, and they gave the same toppings for each cheese (honey, strawberry, and apple). It felt like no thought had been put into what would go well with each cheese. For our mains I got a cheese and spinach stuffed pasta and my partner got the wild boar ragu. The filling of my pasta was bland and the sauce was overly salty. It felt like maybe they were meant to balance each other out but they did not, I just kept getting bland or salty bites. Apart from that there wasn’t much flavor, just vague spinach and cheese flavor. It wasn’t awful but I probably wouldn’t go back and order it again even if it were $15. I didn’t try my partner’s pasta because I don’t eat meat. He said it was good, but he’s not one to complain. For dessert we got the raspberry tiramisu. I should’ve asked what that would entail because it was not a tiramisu. It was a sponge cake with cream and raspberries. NO COFFEE. Tiramisu literally means “pick me up”, how can you have a pick me up with no coffee??? I should say I also got an espresso with dessert and it was maybe the best espresso I’ve had in the states. Overall I would maybe stop in for a glass of wine but would never come back here...