Peasant - Review

Intro
Peasant - Recommended
194 Elizabeth St
New York, NY 10012
(212) 965-9511

After reading the book Heat, I was craving some polenta but many Italian restaurants don’t have it on their summer menu. One restaurant that I was dying to revisit did– Peasant. I’ve been to Peasant before and I remember the pasta and desserts were great, but the service was awful. Our previous visit included these highlights – having reservations and still waiting an hour, rude and inattentive service, and to top it off the bartender spilled a drink on my girlfriend.

However with that said, good Italian food (surprisingly) is hard to come by in the city, so I wanted to give them a second chance. Service was much better this time around, but still had some flaws. Most importantly the food was still great. Overall, I give the restaurant an 85/100.

My Menu
The entire menu is in Italian, which could be intimidating but the servers are pretty good at explaining. My buddies were still relying on me, since I knew enough Italian to decipher the menu.

1. Prosciutto e frutta - Recommended
2. Pizza speck e rucola – Highly Recommended
3. Agnello con polenta – Highly Recommneded
4. Torta di Pesca – Average

Dish Comments

1) Prosciutto was very rich and flavorful. Some of the best I’ve had in a while. The frutta today was fico (figs). Unfortunately after coming back from the Bay Area and having great figs, these were very sad in comparison. Decent, but not great.
2) A pizza more similar to the Italian style than the NY style. Very thin crust with a slightly crispy and slightly chewy texture topped with some smoked pork that has a good amount of fat. Arugula provided a nice peppery contrast to the fatty, smoky pork. A great fresh tasting pizza. Good tomato sauce too…
3) This was the big polenta moment I was waiting for and while it didn’t meet my polenta expectations after reading Heat, it was still awesome. The lamb was perfectly cooked and extremely tender with a great sauce. Aggressive garlic and rosemary flavors were all throughout the dish. The polenta was creamy and had a nice light corn flavor. Reading Heat I was expecting an intense corn flavor – in the book they cook polenta for 3 hours. Didn’t get that, but polenta was still great.
4) I remember this dish being the highlight of my first meal at Peasant. It was very sweet and smoky from cooking in the wood oven. This time the peaches were not as flavorful – maybe due to the fact that I just came back from the Bay Area where the peaches were like honey. Something was definitely missing. My buddies liked this a lot, but their dishes were better (ricotta cheesecake and flourless chocolate cake).

Overall Restaurant Experience (85/100)

• Food 8.5/10 – Great Italian food and I didn’t even order the pasta, which I remembered being amazing.
• Service 7.2/10 – OK. So this time the service was better. Waiter was very attentive and we were seated immediately. However, the busboys were pretty bad. The busboy spilled wine (luckily it was white) on my buddy. They tried to take away our food and drinks before we were finished. These were the only two incidents, but these were still unacceptable.
• Atmosphere 8.5/10 – Place looks like a cave, white brick walls. Kitchen is open, so you can see the chefs prepare your food. Crowd was packed with lots of young woman and some couples. For a summer on a Thursday, the place was packed by 7:30. Still was able to get seated on time though.
• Price 8.8/10 – Price was moderately expensive ($60 a person), but for the price the quality was great. On par with Maremma for the quality of the Italian food.

Closing Comments
At what point does terrible service, turn you away from great food. Peasant’s food is good enough to surpass the spotty service. Definitely some of the best Italian in the city. The other side note is Frankie DeCarlo (executive chef/owner) is actually cooking your food. You can see him taking out pasta and working the grill. Very rare that the head chef actually cooks and it adds to the experience.