When I told my friend and COVA jewellery designer Mel Cuevas that I was off to New York, she highly recommended a meal at Marea since it was also located along the same street as my hotel.
Marea she said, served excellent Italian food. Pasta! The days before we had our meal at Marea, we were having quite a bit of French food so Italian food was a welcome change. The thing about haute cuisine is, I often find it “pretentious.” Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy it a lot because I don’t have it often, but I guess I am not “cultured” enough to enjoy having it daily LOL (confession: that and I just don’t have a deep pocket to have it all the time either haha). I like my meals served in large portions, please haha (big appetite LOL). Big portioned- comfort food still trumps small portioned- meals hahaha 🙂
At Marea, the menu consisted of either the prix fixe (1 starter + 1 main) or the chef’s choice tasting menu.
We all decided on the prix fixe this time. It was actually very reasonably priced, especially for a restaurant that was awarded 2 Michelin stars!
Freshly shucked oysters to start the meal– these lil guys came from Virginia LOL.
I had the tuna tartare, which was good and fresh (Marea is also known for seafood).
But really, the star of the meal was the tagliolini with clams and calamari.
This Strozzopreti pasta with sea urchin and crab was also spectacular. The tomato base was quite overpowering to the palate, and masked the rich flavors of the sea urchin.
The portions were very generous and the service was excellent. If we had more time in New York, we’d definitely be coming back to Marea again to try the other dishes in the menu– and dessert. But this time though, we were just too full to have it! It was an excellent lunch though. More than satisfied!
Marea is located near Columbus Circle, on 240 Central Park South, NYC.
More food and bag posts to come 🙂
x
TheBagHag