Bocca di Bacco

Location: 828 9th Avenue (btw 54th & 55th)
Cuisine: Italian
Hours: Sun-Mon 4pm-12am; Tue-Wed 4pm-1am; Thu-Sat 4pm-2am
Phone: (212) 265-8828
Website: www.boccadibacconyc.com
Prices: About $30 per person
Credit Cards: Amex or cash only

Food: 9
Service: 8
Value: 6
Environment: 9

Visits: 1

Italian food is so common here in New York that it's sometimes considered generic and not exotic, but the food at Bocca di Bacco really stands out. Many say that you have to go to Brooklyn or Queens to get some real ethnic Italian food, but I think this place is a gem in Manhattan. The first thing you'll notice is that the place is a little hard to find given the address. There's no large sign, just a plain storefront. The entrance is a pair of large, ornate wooden doors that look like their floating in the middle of an all-glass wall. The interior is mostly brick with wood accents and decorated to look like a restaurant in Italy.

The food really stood out here. We had their grilled octopus for starters, which was enhanced with celery, red potato salad and herbs. This wasn't a large potato salad accented with bits of octopus. It was a huge tentacle chopped up, so that the main flavor was the octopus itself. I don't remember the name of my entree, but it was a creamy pasta with spinach. The taste was perfect. The spinach was also dried, yet chewy and provided some nice textural contrast to the pasta. I think it was a new item because it's not on the Online menu or Menu Pages.

The place had a pretty good crowd at 7:00, but we were still able to hear each other speaking at a normal volume. Service was pretty good. The only thing that would stop me from coming here frequently is the price. I thought it was a little high for italian.