Date Night: La Nonna - Williamsburg, Brooklyn - 3/5/2014

His Take: Being the catholic followers we are, and today being Ash Wednesday, no meat for us.  Not  a great day to choose to go eat out at an Italian restaurant, but you can never go wrong with Italian food.  Ariana's family opened an Italian restaurant in our neighborhood and she told me "let's go to La Nonna tonight!"  We headed to La Nonna around 7:15 and got a table.  Ariana again reminded me "NO MEAT" which made ordering a little difficult.  To go with our no meat edict, I found the menu at La Nonna a little too small in their selections.   They had a good selection of fishes but other than that I found the menu a little lacking in the pasta choices.  Especially the classic pasta choices you would find at a typical Italian restaurant, La Nonna is an incredibly beautiful restaurant.  It has an old Italian feel and the décor is great.  I left Ariana in charge of ordering the wine, and she picked a Primitive that was excellent.  You know us by now, wine with dinner is pretty much the norm.  I told Ariana that I wanted to take our time with dinner tonight and I have to say La Nonna was incredibly accommodating.  I did not feel rushed one bit.  We ordered our appetizers first without ordering our entrees.  We started with the Salumi & Formaggi, but we told them just bring the cheese no meat!  The provided a few different cheeses, and the parmigiano (MY FAVORITE) and burrata, which if you have not tried burrata you most certainly should.  We also ordered a grilled pizza with cheeses and truffle.  The pizza was also amazing, and being that I had never had grilled pizza before, I was impressed!  We stuffed our faces with appetizers and decided to order our entrees.  Ariana ordered a salad (rabbit food, I promise you, I will never make a salad my entrée, this I vow to you our faithful readers).  She loved her salad which was great.  I ordered a special which was Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe.  The waiter informed us that Cacio e Pepe was a traditional Roman Dish, and I was intrigued.  Simply put Cacio e Pepe is spaghetti with pecorino romano cheese and cracked black pepper.  This sounded like a dish I would love and I have to say, it was good.  I was disappointed though.  The dish definitely needed MORE cheese.  But the spaghetti was well cooked and a good size portion, just lacked the kick of it needed to be a cheese dish.

To close, I enjoyed our meal at La Nonna.  I was not wowed by any means, but it is definitely worth going to for some good Italian food.  I would go back and try more items off the menu.  Their wine selection was great. 


Her Take: Ash Wednesday. No Meat. This Wednesdate thing isn't gonna work out. But we make it work ;) My cousins on my dad's side opened up a new restaurant on the north side called La Nonna Ristorante and I had yet to be there. I told Nicky "hey darling lets go to La Nonna tonight" "sure honey" so we went! (and that is sorta how our conversation went)
We arrived and the place is beautiful and we were greeted so nicely; I haven't seen them in a while.
They sat us down and I quickly looked at the wine list because it was one of those days. Nicky told me I was in charge of ordering any bottle of wine that I wanted so I went with the juicy Primitivo which turned out to be awesome. As I said before, it was Ash Wednesday so we couldn't eat any meat (because we are good Catholics) so for appetizers we ordered the Salumi & Formaggi - hold the salumi- only had the cheeses which were four different cheeses: parmigiano, pecorino, goat cheese, and burrata, and it came with a spicy jam. SOO yummy and we also got the Pizza Tartufata Alla Griglia which is grilled pizza with grana padano, aged fontina and fresh truffle (which was way too big for just us, but we tried to eat it all anyway) and it was delicious, might have been my favorite part of the meal, besides the wine!
For entrée I ordered a salad (how girly of me I know) because it sounded really refreshing and im a sucker for blood orange reduction; I had the Rucola e Pere salad, which is arugula and pears with gorgonzola, caramelized pecans and blood orange reduction. It was very good and a nice size.  Nicky ordered the special of the night, Cacio e Pepe (translates to cheese and pepper), which is actually a traditional Roman dish consisting of spaghetti, cracked black pepper and pecorino Romano cheese; that's it! a very simple dish. I wasn't too crazy about it which was unfortunate because I really love this dish; it was lacking flavor, didn't taste like cheese, only pepper and Nicky even put extra cheese! Kind of disappointing. We were really full because that pizza put us over the edge, so no dessert for us! (especially no dessert for me because I gave it up for lent!) But Giovanni, one of my cousins, gave us two espressos on him to complete our meal. We took our time there which was nice, we spent about 3 hours just talking and sipping on our wine and the service was excellent! No one bothered us or tried to rush us! Very important!! I would like to go back to try their meat dishes and give their pasta a try. Just a heads up: they have a lot of fish on their menu!!

 Pizza Tartufata alla Griglia

 Cacio e Pepe

Rucola e Pere