West Village. 10 AM. You’re thinking pasta. It is Via Carota.
Taylor Swift was just there. With her best friend Ashley Avignone. They celebrated Lena Dunham’s fortieth birthday, a gathering of old pals in the sort of place where secrets get whispered over carabosse gnocchi. You’ve probably been to this neighborhood. You might even have eaten here. Or watched Taylor eat there on the sidewalk, oblivious to the chaos.
The price of fame is low if the restaurant is cheap.
Is it cheap? Relatively. Entrees sit between twenty-two and thirty dollars. Appetizers run fifteen to twenty. Dessert stays under twenty. Do the math for a solo diner: expect sixty to eighty bucks out the door before drinks and tip. That’s not cheap New York City food. It’s honest.
Chefs Jody Williams and Rita Sodi run the show. A gastroteca it is called. More of a casual eatery than a temple. But people dress up anyway. Or maybe they dress down, aggressively so, because comfort is the point. The menu doesn’t change. Good things rarely should.
But you didn’t come for the food critique. You want to know about the wine list.
It’s steep. The Trento Brut starts at sixty-eight dollars a bottle. The Chouilly Grand Cru goes to three hundred five. Why pay that when the food costs so little? Because the atmosphere has a markup you can’t see. Because the air inside costs more per square foot than the real estate outside.
Stuck in Ohio? Kansas? Tokyo?
You can buy their cocktails. Online. Yes, really. Signature Manhattans, Martinis, Negronis. They ship the liquid ambition directly to your door. Prices range from thirty-nine dollars for a single bottle up to over four hundred for the sets. There’s even sparkling option, just in case you feel fancy on a Tuesday night.
You’ll never really be in the West Village. The light is different there. The noise has a specific rhythm you can only hear when you’re sitting at table four.
But the bottle arrives on Thursday. You open it. It tastes like Manhattan rain and expensive linen napkins. For five seconds. Then it’s just alcohol again.
