Paola’s East
341 Pantigo Road
East Hampton
631-359-3100
Dinner nightly
Lounge open until 2 a.m.
Do we really need another expensive Upper East Side Italian restaurant in our midst? More importantly, do we need a restaurant that (inexplicably) charges far more here for the same food that it serves at its Madison Avenue location? More even than the 1770 House, Nick and Toni’s, or Bell and Anchor?
Here are a few examples: A simple cocktail at Paola’s East is $18, wines by the glass are $17 to $22. At Bell and Anchor craft cocktails are $15 to $16, and wines by the glass are $12 to $15. At 1770 House, side dishes are $9. At Paola’s East they are $14. Why are we paying so much for a small dish of spinach? The iconic roast half chicken served with Balsam Farms crushed Yukon gold potatoes, pancetta, garlic, and rosemary jus at Nick and Toni’s is $32. At Paola’s, some Bell and Evans boneless chicken “tights” (as it was listed on the menu) cost $40. Forty dollars for some pieces of chicken that are topped with some raw chopped vegetables that could have come from the salad bar at Citarella.
The menu has more careless spelling mistakes than the cheapest joint in Chinatown. Besides chicken “tights,” there is “fenel,” “aragula,” “tomatoe,” filet and fillet, and the gamberi (shrimp or prawn) alla griglia was actually branzino. There is no steak on the menu and the wood-burning oven is on the fritz.
Paola’s East looks the same as it has since the Laundry Restaurant left the premises years ago. It is sprawling and white and looks like a way station for marauding pop-ups. The nearby neighbors have successfully shut down the outdoor dining slash cornhole playground that has existed the last couple of years, but there is still live and loud music on the covered back patio.
After we were seated, we were given some average bread with very good, fruity green olive oil. We began our meal with a Caesar salad, carciofi alla giudia (“artichokes in the style of the Roman Jews”), and calamari.
The Caesar salad was what I had anticipated from a Madison Avenue restaurant, safely bland and creamy and nary a hint of anchovy, lemon, or garlic, which to me are kind of the Holy Trinity of this salad. The croutons were very good, though.
The twice-fried artichokes (three small ones for $24) were quite good but maybe could have benefited from some aioli on the side. My friend Ellen, a chef who lived a good portion of her life in the Italian part of Switzerland, declared them “properly done.”
The calamari was good, rings only, slightly chewy, with lemony breadcrumbs on top. We all agreed that we would have liked some tentacles as well, but some restaurants (or their clientele) seem squeamish about this tasty body part of the Cephalopoda.
For entrees we ordered a half order of rigatoni with sausage and porcini mushrooms, branzino, chicken thighs, vitello tonnato, and a side order of sautéed spinach with raisins and pine nuts. The rigatoni was good, cooked al dente and with detectable bits of porcini mushrooms. The branzino was pretty good, very simple, a filet (or fillet) on top of peas, a few fava beans, and quartered artichoke hearts.
The chicken thighs were topped with cubed cucumbers, fennel, tomatoes, onions, and perhaps a bit of oregano or marjoram. Ellen described it as “what I would make on a weeknight.”
The vitello tonnato had good flavor but was one of the worst presentations of the dish we had ever seen. If vitello tonnato is served at Lorusso Cotugno or Forte Boccea, it probably looks like this. No need to look those up, they are Italian prisons.
This thinly sliced veal preparation is usually laid out on a platter and covered with a light sauce of pureed tuna, capers, olive oil, and lemon, perhaps also garnished with additional capers, sometimes some parsley, and extra lemon slices. Paola’s rendition was an ice cold plate with several very thin slices of veal with a drizzle of olive oil. A dish in the middle of the plate held a tuna mush, thick as pate, to spread on the veal. Flavor: B+; presentation: D. The side order of spinach was small and okay. It was sautéed with some golden raisins and pine nuts.
Andres, our waiter, was fun and smiling and delightful; he gets an A+. The restaurant wasn’t super busy inside but the patio was lively with people who had come for the music. The prices at Paola’s East are very high, especially for what you get, and are inexplicably much higher than the restaurant’s Madison Avenue location. Are these “Hamptons” prices? Appetizers (antipasti) are $16 to $26, pastas are $28 to $32, other entrees are $36 to $52, sides are $14, and desserts are $14.
All desserts are made in house. We tried the lemon tart, berries with zabaglione, and chocolate mousse. The lemon tart was dense with a somewhat gelatinous filling. The zabaglione on the berries had a strong Marsala flavor but lacked the airy fluffiness that is a hallmark of this simple but difficult-to-make sauce. The chocolate mousse had very good, bittersweet flavor but was also so dense and ice cold, the fattiness of the egg yolks, cream, butter, and cocoa butter made it as solid as a ganache or terrine.
I have been to Italy a few times and taught Italian cooking in Washington, D.C., for several years. What I learned is that Italian cooking and preparation mostly relies on the beautiful freshness and quality of its ingredients, not so much on sauces or technique like French cooking or a multitude of additions like Indian or Thai cuisine.
There are so many good Italian restaurants out here, from the simple garlic knots with spaghetti and Chianti bottles wrapped in raffia of Il Cappuccino to the always reliable Cittanuova to the charming setting of Il Mulino, where the waiters float by your table offering chunks of Grana Padana, roasted peppers, cured meats, and focaccia before you’ve even ordered your food.
We all agreed that Paola’s East gets a C+ although Lulu, world traveler and future great American novelist, wanted to give it a higher grade because of Andres and the music scene in back.
It is generally true that the detached and breathlessly aristocratic tribes of the Upper East Side stick to their own neighborhood restaurants, country clubs, and vacation spots. So perhaps they are delighted, even comforted, that yet another familiar haunt has landed on the East End to serve them expensive branzino, chicken tights, and safely seasoned Caesars.