Lombardi's can suck a dick
I wanted to take my parents to Lombardi's this weekend because it's supposed to be the shit. Of course when we showed up it was closed, closed for a private party, closed for a staff meeting, absolutely swarmed with people.
Honestly, half the city was waiting to get in there. I asked some fists that were standing around how long their wait was to which they replied, "They said an hour about 40 minutes ago."
I knew what had to be done, and while I was doing it, when one of the fists was like, "You should wait, it's totally worth it..." Hey fuckface, you should shut the fuck up because your advice is totally not worth it.
Anywho... I remembered passing this new place in my hood which, unfortunately for them, is completely hidden from traffic. Everyone knows: hard to find restaurant = no wait = Goodtimes.
I don't know what the hell this dude is talking about, but Gothamist has a competely uninspired review here. But they do have nice pictures, however.
Cronkite is a large and airy single room, with a bar holding it down on the end. The low lighting could inspire romance, if that's your goal. The deal is pizza and wine, and they break it down in 3 sections.
Basically there's an old-school section, a regional section, then a new-school section. Flip the menu and each section corresponds to suggested wine pairings. We orderd a Classic Margahrita pizza from the old-school section, then some sort of Spinach Pesto pizza from the new-school section.
The both pizzas were truly remarkable. Especially the Spinach one because they pile fresh Spinach on top like a salad, which is cool because I don't like the typical spinach-to-pizza application. We ordered an appetizer sampler which featured buffalo mozarella, middle-eastern inspired garbanzo bean salad, beets, and a eggplant bruschetta thingy. They have a cannoli dessert which comes with one black and one white cannoli. At the end they bring you cotton candy. How about that?
Best of all, the service was excellent and cool, although there was a large shard of broken glass in my mom's food. (She was fine.)
Cronkite has the best non-street pizza I've had in NYC, and they have a nice room to eat it in. They can easily handle large groups, if you want to have The Obligatory Pain-In-The-Ass Group Birthday Restaurant Party that all New Yorkers insist on.
I encourage you to extend the middle finger to Lombardi's and keep it realer with Cronkite.
Thank you.