NYCReview
Gran Tivoli
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Some places are nice to visit, just not for the obvious reason. Gallery openings might have interesting art on display, but plenty of people just go for free wine and to potentially meet someone with a house in Sag Harbor. Pumpkin patches seem like places you’d go to buy pumpkins, but you actually go to show the world how you and your significant other have such a good relationship. Gran Tivoli is a sit-down restaurant, but you should really use it for drinks and snacks rather than a full dinner.
This Italian spot in Nolita, which is from a team behind some popular places in Australia, has an atmosphere that will appeal to regulars at nearby restaurants like Lure Fishbar, The Dutch, and Balthazar. There’s a wood bar that runs more than half the length of the dining room, and between the acoustic jazz, bow-tied bartenders, and long shelves of brown liquor, it feels kind of like a speakeasy. The long, narrow space is pretty dark, and has a bunch of round booths perfect for groups. There’s even a great cocktail bar (Peppi’s Cellar) down a flight of stairs at the back, which provides excellent people-watching for anyone sitting in the dining room and watching the steady stream of well-dressed crowds walking by.
But we’d only recommend a full dinner at Gran Tivoli if you’re more interested in a fun atmosphere than great food. The Italian dishes here, especially the large plates - pastas, entrees, and various cuts of steak - range from things that are perfectly fine but forgettable, to a few we didn’t actually want to finish. For example, the buckwheat ravioli are half submerged in a pool of melted butter (and don’t taste like much other than that), and the gnocchi could similarly use a lifeboat to keep from drowning in blue cheese sauce. And two things we generally enjoy - New York sirloin and bone marrow - are served together in what should be the happiest marriage since Morticia and Gomez, but the steak is tough and over-charred, and the bone marrow adds nothing as a condiment on a really thick cut of meat.
The small plates are a lot more enjoyable, and they make Gran Tivoli a good option for after-work meetups, when you can share a few things with a friend after realizing your martinis are being soaked up by nothing but a slice of birthday cake you found in the office kitchen. Get the black bass carpaccio that’s light and a bit spicy, or the cheesy polenta that’s topped with lots of crab meat. And no matter what else you eat here, make sure to order the prosciutto. It’s a generous portion that comes with a ball of mozzarella, as well as disks of lard bread that taste as great as you’d imagine bread made with lard would.
Gran Tivoli is one of the few restaurants in this part of the city that’s attractive and upscale, but also not stuffy - which is a big part of the reason why it’s packed almost every night. And while there are a bunch of places in Soho and Nolita where you might like people to think you hang out all the time, Gran Tivoli is a place where you actually can. Just think of it more as a nice spot for drinks and snacks than anything else. Kind of like a gallery opening.