Scarpetta!

So, Scarpetta is a restaurant owned by Scott Conant. I've seen him on Food Network a few times and hes well known for making awesome pasta. So when I heard Ted Allen saying that one of the best things he ever ate was his spaghetti at Scarpetta I thought I would be hitting two birds with one stone. I could check out this fancy guy's restaurant AND cross something off of my food list. So off we went. We started with this huge bread basket. It had a stromboli thing it which I thought was really cool since no restaurants do sandwiches in bread baskets but I didn't try it. The bread basket is also served with three dips: the white is marscarpone butter, eggplant marinara, and olive oil. Each one was really good. I liked the marscarpone butter because it was like butter but had a slightly different taste and was really creamy. The eggplant marinara was really tomato-y and eggplant-y. Really strong eggplant flavor but I liked it. The olive oil was really flavorful too, very herby.

Now I heard that his other signature dish was polenta and being that I never had polenta before, I thought trying it here would be best since he's like the pasta master. It was creamy polenta with a fricassee of truffled mushrooms. 

I have no idea what fricassee is, all I know is it must mean gooood. lol. I love truffle anything and I dont hate mushrooms and this was his signature dish so how could we not order it. So first off it came without the stuff on top. The mushroom truffle sauce is served in the metal pot and they pour it right over the creamy polenta when it gets to the table. The polenta itself is cornmeal and it was really smooth and creamy. It didnt really taste like anything, maybe buttery. Most of the flavor came from the truffled mushroom sauce which was spot on. Really creamy with a rich sauce. I love truffles. Always a good choice. Now we followed that with the spaghetti with tomato and basil.

So that was what we were there for. I know its a simple dish. But supposedly it was executed very well. Lemme tell ya. This pasta was perfectly cooked. Its in between al dente and soft. I usually have really mushy spagehtti so this was a nice change. And the tomato and basil sauce was actually really good. You could tell it was made fresh and it just had such an herby powerful taste. Though I have to say, maybe I'm just a simpleton but it was still spaghetti, albeit really good spaghetti. We finished up with two chocolate desserts.

Sorry I don't have a picture of the other one. I did take a picture but its too dark to tell, and since its a new addition to the menu there arent any online so sorry about that. This here is a chocolate amdei cake with salted caramel gelato and chocolate butterscotch. The cake itself was very chocolate-y and dense and in the center it was very fudgy but not like a molten cake. Very chocolate-y. I have to say that the star was the salted caramel gelato. It was the perfect salty-sweet. The caramel was smooth and just awesome. The other desert was a chocolate budino with spiced cranberry sauce and a kumquat confit. It was essentially a chocolate mousse. The cranberry sauce was a bit tart but not overpowering. I had never tried kumquat before so that was interesting. I found that I like kumquats. Theyre like a citrus fruit thats sweet , kinda like an orange. I think it was a good citrus-chocolate combo. So overall, I think scarpetta was ok, maybe it's just me but I'm not sure if I would go back, unless I'm rich.