Women sisterhood fine dining at #Cafe Carmellini
Women sisterhood fine dining at #Cafe Carmellini
Last Saturday, I joined a fabulous sisterhood group known as “Booked and Bougie.” We set out on a quest for a delightful dining experience and chose to visit the newly opened Café Carmellini at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in NoMad. This restaurant exudes sophistication, featuring crisp white table linens and impeccably dressed service captains. The dining area is a stunning blend of blue and gold hues, complemented by rich brown woods, soaring ceilings, and full-sized faux trees, all enhanced by discreet balcony-level box seating. The ambiance is a captivating mix of nautical charm and Old World elegance, reminiscent of a first-class dining room aboard a romance-novel zeppelin gliding gracefully across the Atlantic. Andrew Carmellini, the mastermind behind the restaurant, honed his skills under the tutelage of Boulud and has since created a series of stylish eateries (including Locanda Verde, Lafayette, and the Dutch) that are trendy yet approachable, always infused with a sense of fun.
The menu at Café Carmellini dances on the edge of French and Italian influences. While it embraces the rich, buttery essence typical of French cuisine, it also exudes an unmistakable Italian flair, particularly in the exuberant way Carmellini celebrates vegetables. The menu boasts an abundance of foam, which finds its finest expression in the whimsically named Duck-Duck-Duck Tortellini. Here, the star ingredient makes three appearances: as a filling for the pasta, as a demi-glace draping it, and as a foie-gras foam that lightens the dish beautifully, preventing it from becoming overly rich. In a menu as grand as this, one might think to skip the pasta, but that would be a grave mistake at a Carmellini establishment.
A smooth scoop of coconut sorbet, rich and velvety, almost steals the spotlight from the passionfruit semifreddo it’s paired with. Then there’s a straightforward yet delightful dish of pistachio gelato drizzled with cherry syrup, which feels like a sophisticated version of spumoni that dreams are made of. The standout dessert, though, is a grapefruit sorbetto called A.B.C.—named after Carmellini’s grandmother, who, as the story goes, would kick off her mornings with a half-grapefruit splashed with vermouth. What a character! She’s celebrated here with a bottle of Dolin dry, poured with flair from a height over the soft pink scoops of frozen citrus. The flavors come together in a surprisingly deep way: sharp, bitter, citrusy, floral, and sweet. Who doesn’t enjoy a bit of flair with their meal when it’s this entertaining?
