Say When with Max Silvestri: Otto
A man about town writes about town
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This is my first column here, so I have decided to explode out of the gate by taking a mercilessly controversial stance: I think birthday parties are great! This is probably too radioactive a topic to get anywhere near, but I don’t care. Seriously, straw-men-I’ve-conceived, stop with hating on birthdays. They are wonderful ways to remind ourselves that we aren’t dead by giving purpose to eating and drinking regrettable amounts. I especially like birthday dinners, which is where “elite friends” (think MySpace Top 12, if your brain has a time machine back to 2006) gather for a more intimate and ultimately more rewarding shared dining experience before opening celebrations up to second-tier friends or first-tier friends with irritating significant others.
My favorite part of birthday dinners is when the check comes and everyone asks if they can split their portions, preferably totally unevenly—across two debit cards because one account only has $40 in it, or because my service wasn’t as good as everyone else’s so I’m just going to tip 14 percent, or because I’ve never heard of sales tax since I was raised on an idiot farm. Whoops, sorry: That is my least favorite part of birthday dinners—enough to make me wish my friend celebrating the birthday hadn’t lived another year.
Last week a friend threw a birthday dinner at Otto, a pizza place near Washington Square Park run by Mario Batali. If you don’t know him, perhaps because you were raised on an idiot farm, Batali is a big redheaded restaurateur who seems to get around a lot (though probably slowly) and is friends with Gwyneth “Goop” Paltrow. Also, he is very fun to hang out with according to Heat, a book I read (not bragging) by an author who clearly would like to be kissing Batali on the mouth pretty much constantly.
The point is Batali is a smart and successful guy, and he knows how to make a place fun. And he seems to know all about how irritating it is to split a check. So for large groups at Otto, he lays out a flat rate: $60 and everyone gets a ton of starters, pizzas, desserts, and unlimited wine. (That's with the $40 prix-fixe for food and a $20 add-on for wine.) Unlimited wine! That’s bananas. I mean, the food is great too: plate after plate of cured meats, vegetables, olives, breads, ultra-thin pizzas covered with things like fried eggs and lardo, and fat-people gelato flavors like crème fraiche and olive oil. But unlimited wine? I realize this is a grownup restaurant with stars from The New York Times, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have at least one person every night taking advantage of this deal who doesn’t understand limits or decorum—and is able to pick up and drink a wine glass without using his or her (let’s be real: his) hands.
We definitely had one the night I was there, and I don’t want to name names, but let’s just call this person “schmyself.” Cheers to you, Otto, for making a place for large groups to have dinner where everyone can just bring a few $20 bills and where the staff has a very lax “get out of here” policy. No haggling over checks and no waiting for change—just straight to calling cabs to the bar or the hospital, wherever.
In conclusion, parties are fun, and Mario Batali is good at the business of making restaurants. I am living on the contrarian edge over here in this column. Get ready, people. Lock up your sacred cows, because I am basically Bill Hicks if he was really passionate about relaxing and appetizers.
