Alice

126 W 13th St New York, NY 10011

Alice has such a romantic, and uniquely New York energy. The room is calm, almost serene, but the cooking is anything but timid. The pasta is where Alice shows its hand. Hand-cut, properly sauced, and deeply satisfying, it arrives looking modest and eats like a thesis. A bowl of tagliatelle or pappardelle, (depending on the day), comes glossed in butter, olive oil, or a slow-cooked ragù that tastes of patience rather than performance. The noodles have bite, real resistance, the kind that reminds you pasta is meant to be chewed, not inhaled. Nothing is overworked, nothing drowned. This is Italian cooking filtered through New York intelligence and Hudson Valley discipline. Don’t sleep on the meat or seafood dishes (branzino, lobster appetizer) happy to report, they always deliver.

If the mood inspires you to deviate from wine for the night, we usually opt for cocktails. Alice pours drinks with structure and seriousness: bitter-forward, herb-leaning, often low-key in appearance and quietly devastating in effect. A Negroni variation might lean greener, brighter; a gin drink might smell faintly of garden and citrus peel. Cheers, cin cin, whichever you prefer. Sit in the front room or at the bar.