My wife is celebrating a big birthday on Saturday. I wanted her to have a memorable birthday so last night I organized a group of our best friends to meet for dinner.
These would technically be Elly’s “work friends”, but this is 4 1/2 couples that we have known for 10+ years. These are folks we vacation with, kids have sleep-overs together, etc. Just good people and great friends.
We ate at Barbuto. My wife does the Manhattan dining thing with clients so she knows the good places. I had never been there. The chef, Jonathan Waxman. is apparently famous (I wouldn’t know).
The web site makes it look fancier than it is. The place has a great casual funky vibe, with huge garage doors as the front wall that open up in nice weather.
There’s a “chef’s table” for big groups. It’s just a big long table back where they are cooking. You can watch them cook, but really the fun was that they just bring out dish after dish of wonderful food. There’s no menu for the chef’s table, they just bring out tons of food family style. For a big group this is fantastic.
The food was incredible. We had a blast. Just a fantastic night.
