Bocca (19th St. btw Broadway and Park)

Lots of pictures for this post!

The house cocktail list (below) at Bocca is so good! I have a picture so I can try to re-create them at home. I had the basil gimlet... wow.  Strong. Tasty. Refreshing. A dangerous or a wonderful combination, depending on how you look at it :)

For an appetizer, I started off by splitting the pineapple carpaccio with my mom. It was so good!! Very, very thin slices of fresh pineapple, on the plate with tiny pieces of prosciutto, and some ricotta cheese and honeycomb (not just honey!) on the side to eat it with. It was very inventive - which I always appreciate - and a light appetizer that still had a lot of depth of flavor - salty, sweet, fresh, creamy. (below)

My main was of course fabulous, too. Ricotta gnocchi... omg. It's really soft, and not as heavy as the potato version. This one came with some bacon and zucchini. Very warm, and it wasn't your typical humongous Italian portion, either. (below) I've actually been wanting to make homemade ricotta gnocchi... we'll see how that eventually turns out.

And finally dessert. I went with my typical chocolate choice (I'm not a big fan of tiramisu, it's ok), and it was a good one. Flourless chocolate cake (two pieces! one would've been plenty), with chocolate ganache, and chocolate gelato. (below - flash went off in the pic so it looks a little weird) I love chocolate. Can you tell?

And finally, limoncello. A small glass for each of us - on the house. If it's not obvious, I would recommend this place to others. The place wasn't too crowded (Thursday night), it was a warm ambiance, not too loud, and you weren't sitting on top of your neighbors like some NYC restaurants. There are a bajillion good Italian restaurants in this city, which I will of course continue to explore, but people are always asking for recommendations. Now I have another one to offer up.