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Vento (New York Times)

Posted by Adam Kuban, April 30, 2004 at 5:01 PM

PHOTOGRAPH BY HIROKO MASUIKE for the New York Times

Stephen Hanson, whose B.R. Guest Restaurants company owns Ruby Foo's Dim Sum and Sushi Palace, Blue Water Grill, Blue Fin, Dos Caminos, and the New York Times–3-star Fiamma Osteria, among others, has opened Vento, which apparently serves pizza. Sam Sifton, in the Times, is not keen on Vento's pies:

It is far too early, perhaps, to evaluate how good any of it is, or will be. Restaurants, even franchise operations, take a while to find their sea legs. But there is promise in those pastas, in an almost smoky appetizer of braised veal trotters, in homemade lamb sausage with broccoli rabe, in big, meaty pork ribs. The pizzas need work, but most pizzas do, and on a recent night they were flying out of the kitchen all the same, as if dispatched by the fellows at Domino's. In matters of What the People Want, Mr. Hanson is no dummy.

But our favorite part of the review comes in the next two grafs:

Down in the restaurant's basement, beyond the bathrooms, is a dark and cavernous space that is in the process of becoming Level V, a lounge. Early reports about this space have waxed historical about how the room used to be a horse stable—a quaint reminder of Manhattan's distant past.

Yes, well. It was also the Manhole, and the Hellfire Club. They used to have sex slave auctions down there. A different time.

Ha.

VENTO
Location: 675 Hudson Street (at 14th Street)
Phone: 212-699-2400 | (f) 212-699-2401

2 Comments | Tags: Manhattan, Meatpacking District, NYC, Reviews