A Rainy Saturday Night at San Sabino
Crab & Mortadella Dip, Pepperoni Carbonara, Shrimp Parm, Vintage Amaro...
Sunday was one of those out-of-nowhere, mid-60-degree days that inspires New Yorkers to spill out from their apartments to soak up the sun and pretend it’s already summer. Save for taking out the garbage and recycling and running downstairs to receive a dinner delivery order, I was inside all day in Sunday Scaries mode, pivoting between writing, prepping for the week ahead, and lazing about.
It was the flip side of the weather situation on Saturday, when it rained nearly every hour throughout the day and into the night, and I was out and about in the Big City in a bright blue Columbia rain jacket and my well-worn Mariners cap. I embraced this very Seattle-style Saturday by taking the F Train to see an early matinee of the nearly three-hours-long Dune: Part Two at the Regal Essex Crossing on the Lower East Side. I bolstered myself for the screening with a bucket of their new caramel-glazed popcorn (still prefer proper caramel corn to this glazed situation) and a giant Diet Pepsi (boo! to Regal for switching to Pepsi from Coca-Cola). The added layer of RPX audio that rumbled through the speakers with every Thumper’s rhythmic thump-thump-thump and crackling explosion was decidedly immersive, but I was frequently distracted by the pair of too-young-to-enjoy-the-picture rambunctious boys who posted up in the seats next to me along with their caretaker and then spent the entire movie texting each other and playing games on their phones.
I would be sticking around Manhattan for the rest of the night as I had been invited to check out San Sabino, the highly anticipated new West Village Italian American seaffod restaurant from the team at the popular (and impossible to land a reservation) Don Angie.
My associate Benny, who was joining me for dinner, stopped by the theatre to pick me up and decide upon something to keep us busy (and dry) until then. I’m a bus guy, so we took the M14A-SBS on a crosstown journey to the West Village to kill some time at Katana Kitten. I suggested we grab a slice to hold us over until San Sabino and stopped by the Made in New York Pizza on Hudson Street. The walls of the pizzeria were covered in a Sgt. Pepper’s-like kaleidoscopic collage of famous New Yorkers and NYC landmarks, including Patrick Ewing, Daryl Strawberry, Lou Reed, John Belushi, Billy Joel, and John Travolta as Tony Monero.
And in the corner by the register I spotted the late, great, and still painfully missed Philip Seymour Hoffman depicted with a slice of pizza from his role as the boorish yet unintentionally hilarious former child-star Sandy Lyle in 2004’s Along Came Polly (Exhibit 1A: “Sandy Slips” | Exhibit 1B: “Raindance!”). Phil used to live just a couple blocks away and I wondered if he ever stopped in for a slice. My only NYC PSH sighting was when I was getting a haircut in the West Village and when they took the hot towel from my face there he was waiting his turn for a cut, thumbing through a magazine.
It was naturally packed when we walked past Dante West Village but I wanted to say hello to the bartenders so we snaked our way through the line. The guys seemed happy to see us but there was no room at the bar. Junior and Yann motioned for me to “Hold up” and then returned to send us on our way with two Dante Negronis on the rocks in a to-go coffee cup. It didn’t matter that we only had a block walk to Katana Kitten. Surprised to see us on a Saturday afternoon, Armando and Lily remained suspect about the “coffee” in our hands and balanced that out with an order of two of their Meguroni #2 (Iichiko Saiten Shochu, Genever, Aged Umeshu, Caffo Red Bitter, Kinome).
Saturday at San Sabino
With the rain coming down even harder Benny and I made our way to San Sabino, located at Greenwich Avenue and Jane Street on the same block as Don Angie in the space that was the home to Benny’s Burritos since 1988. The corner restaurant seats around 55 people and the room had a warm amber glow with yellow, coral, and brown colorway that put me in mind of Bar Luce, the Wes Anderson-designed Milanese cafe located at Fondazione Prada.
Since we were an early seating there was a lot of sharply dressed staffers standing at attention by the bar and it was great to see a familiar face in Damien Good—the Director of Hospitality for Quality Branded, who I used to see often when he was part of the Frankies 457 Spuntino restaurant group—welcome us at the door. And I was happy to run into Andre, one of my favorite Momofuku Ssam Bar servers from back in the day, who I had run into elsewhere just a couple weeks prior.