We’ve heard a lot of good things about Arturo’s in the Village so we decided to check it out one Saturday night for a late dinner with Josh’s parents. Even though it was around 10 pm, the restaurant was completely packed. There was a jazz combo playing, which bumped the noise level up a bit but they were quite talented and pleasant to listen to. There wasn’t much room though by the bar to wait, but luckily we only had to wait a few minutes for a table and were soon seated.
All of us wanted to try the pizza we’ve heard so much about so we ordered a pie to share, and also decided to split a few other dishes. First we had the arugula salad with shaved parmesan. It was lightly dressed and simple, just as we expected.
Arugula salad topped with lots of parmesan cheese
The famed pizza, which we asked for well done, came nicely blistered and not too charred, but the crust was very disappointing. It was much thicker than we thought it would be, and very dense as well. As a result, it was crunchy rather than crispy, without the nice chew on the inside.
Well done large cheese pizza
The pizza also didn’t have enough cheese on it and way too much sauce, rendering it a bit too sweet.
A bit too much sauce, not enough cheese
We had to sprinkle on tons of parmesan cheese and garlic powder just to get any saltiness and extra flavor. While I like garlic powder on my standard delivery pizzeria style pizza, I would never sprinkle it on a pizza like Lombardi’s or John’s, which I considered Arturo’s pizza style to be similar to. Doing so just made me feel a bit blasphemous, but the pizza really had no flavor to it.
Underside shot
Even worse was the chicken parmesan, which Josh and I found to be inedible. The pieces that we sliced off were strangely bouncy in texture, like chewing on rubber. At first we thought the chicken was raw, but an impromptu surgical maneuver on our plates revealed the chicken to be fully cooked. So why was the texture so off? We don’t know, and quite frankly, we didn’t want to know. Josh’s dad tried a piece and while his bite wasn’t strangely textured, he didn’t care for the flavor. We left the chicken untouched after that, and the waitress never made a comment or questioned us about it when she cleared away the plate.
Really bad chicken parmesan
The spaghetti Bolognese was better, though the pasta and sauce were a bit watery. There was a definite pool of liquid on the plate, which is just sloppy preparation. Nevertheless, the Bolognese sauce was decently tasty, and it was my favorite thing on the table.
Soupy but tasty spaghetti bolognese
Since we were ordering pasta separately, we opted to get a side dish of broccoli rabe with our chicken parm (you get a choice of pasta, vegetable, or salad). The broccoli rabe was really limp and overcooked. It was hard to tell if they boiled it or sautéed it, and it didn’t have any seasoning at all.
Mushy broccoli rabe
Overall the whole meal was one disappointment after another. Which was surprising because Arturo’s gets such great reviews, and the fact that it was still packed and hopping when we left. Maybe people go for the ambience, as the décor gives it that old time NYC pizzeria feel, with old movie posters and pictures hanging on the walls. The jazz ensemble was also a nice touch, but we were there for the food, not the atmosphere. With so many other better pizza places around the city, I don’t think we’ll be coming back here anytime soon.
Arturo’s
106 West Houston St. at Thompson St.
New York, NY
