(Photos: Daniel Maurer)
Inoteca broke some hearts when it closed this past February, but as of last night you can once again put away pasta on the corner of Ludlow and Rivington. The Lower East Side offshoot of Soho restaurant Galli doesn’t serve truffled egg toast (sigh), but its menu of competently rendered Italian standards isn’t likely to disappoint anyone looking for carbs and carbonara. Just about the only Italian comfort food missing from the menu is fettuccine alfredo.
If you’re looking for the sort of enlightening pasta dishes you might find at, say, Bar Primi, you won’t find them here. As you can see from the menu below, there are no less than seven varieties of spaghetti, some five varieties of rigatoni, and not a heck of a lot beyond that.
“Chicken” and “veal” are the recurring words on the entrees menu. But, hey, there are a ton of salads and, who knows, maybe the “mozz chips” can become the late-night lure that truffled egg toast once was.
The bathroom wallpaper.
On the cocktail menu, the standout is a “milk punch” made with vodka, espresso syrup, chocolate bitters, and cereal milk (in case you’re wondering: the cereal milk homemade, not from Momofuku Milk Bar).
Milk Punch.
Is this place going to change the frightful state of affairs in the Lower East Side’s Cologne Zone? Absolutely not. (For that, we’re looking to the eclair cafe.) But here, in any case, is the menu.
