Restaurants NOT To Eat In When Visiting New York: Nello

blog@mobissimo.com (Mobissimo) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 11:51:55 -0700

If you're like us, you most likely consult a list of "Best Restaurants" when you go on a holiday. Why is that? Why not consult a "Worst Restaurants" instead? Just so you know which ones to avoid. Seems at least one restaurant should go on that list if you're heading to New York, it's called Nello and both Boing Boing and New York Times think that not only does the food suck, but it's running a borderline con game.

From Boing Boing

Not everything on the menu was priced. Specials are hard-sold; ask a price for one, and a server mumbles quickly through the prices of all. We didn't get suckered by the $275 truffle shavings, fortunately. What got us was the sundries.
We ordered a couple of dishes we thought were $30 or so: expensive enough! But a salad turned out to be another $49. Coffee was $12 per tiny little cup. Refill, sir? No, thank you, I'll just have water. Water was $15.
The weirdest red flag: the table next to us emptied suddenly while we were eating. I didn't pay any attention to it, but when our check came latercomplete with a 20% gratuity already appliedit listed all sorts of things on it we had not ordered. It turned out to be the table of no return's gargantuan bill, accidentally given to a foreigner eating a $30 Papardelle pasta.

From the New York Times

They ate crisp artichokes offered as carciofi alla giudia. These tasted of shirt cardboard. They ate sawdusty chicken livers lashed with balsamic. They sipped at lentil soup familiar to anyone who owns a can opener and shared too-salty saffron risotto, correctly yellow, of no particular flavor.
They gummed at cannelloni with mushrooms that from the grit on them might actually have been harvested wild, as well as at rubbery swordfish drenched in mustard sauce, then laughed about lobster ravioli so tasteless it might have been prop food for an advertisement.

Another article from the New York Times.

On Oct. 30, two friends and I went to lunch at Nello, a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Shortly after we were seated, a waiter came to the table and mentioned the days specials, one of which was described as pasta with truffle sauce.
At the end of the meal, I got a look at the check and for a moment I thought I was hallucinating. The meal for the three of us cost $400. How was that possible?
Easy.
The pasta dish cost $275.
No joke.
When I confronted the headwaiter, I was told that Nello never discloses the prices of specials and that it is the customers duty to pipe up with questions. To add obnoxiousness to injury, the manager told me that we should expect high prices at Nello because 1) the restaurant is near Hermès, the French seller of luxury clothing and bags, and 2) the restaurant has been in its current location for nearly 25 years.

Mobissimo Blog - Places To Avoid

Restaurants NOT To Eat In When Visiting New York: Nello