Sunday Dinner at Parm

Even though neither MD and I are Italian American, a good hearty Sunday dinner at Parm is always a good call.  We found two seats in the back of the restaurant and as usual, it was a tight cozy squeeze at the Nolita spot.

We started with a trio of the vegetables.  The first to arrive were the B&G poppers.  These cheesy stuffed peppers were freshly fried, piping hot and perfect with the ranch dressing.  Parm’s house cauliflower wasn’t just another roasted veggie.  Instead, Parm served theirs raw and shaved thinly.  A toss in a creamy yogurt dressing with rosemary and a few pieces of salfiy, these were refreshing and oddly addicting.  The last of the three vegetables was a hot and spicy tower of buffalo cucumber.  The best part about these were the pieces of chunky blue cheese and peanuts coated with the spicy Frank’s red hot.

Mozzarella sticks and garlic pizza knots followed.  Even though these two are pretty basic bar staples, there is a right way and a wrong way to make these and Parm makes them the right way.  The knots are chewy and garlicky while the mozzarella sticks were thatidyllic stretchy consistency without a hint of oily.

An Italian Sunday day dinner would not be complete without a pasta of some sort.  The special that night was a simple bolognese with a hand rolled garganelli.  Even though I often prefer lengthier pastas, garganelli is one of my favorites.  These hand rolled ones had that perfect chewy yet tender bite and the shape allowed the meat and tomato sauce to cling perfectly onto each little quill.

And of course, one of Parm’s delicious sandwiches to wrap up dinner and the meatball parm did not disappoint.  Instead of spherical meatballs that I often fear would slide out from the buns with one bite, Parm made theirs into a patty which made it much easier to deliver into our mouths.  The top layer of bread was a little overwhelming but that bottom was soaked with meat jus and tomato sauce and balanced well with the perfectly melted mozzarella.

Finally, a few small bites of zeppoles to satisfy our sweet tooth.  Even though we had both expected to love the Nutella stuffed fried dough balls, the apple stuffed zeppoles took us by surprise.  They were like the best apple pie morphed into a bite size treat.  We licked the coarse sugars off our fingers and made sure that we didn’t miss a drop of delicious filling that might have escaped.  Ahh, nothing like a hearty meal at Parm to end the week.

Parm | 248 Mulberry Street, New York, NY 10012 | http://parmnyc.com