Serafina

Occasion: Getting-to-know-you lunch with Boss, Boss' Boss and two GC underlings
Location: Serafina at The Time on 49th between B'way and 8th
Edibles: prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella; porcini mushroom ravioli

Musings: A whole new neighborhood for lunching! Unfortunately, that neighborhood is Times Square. My new office is just a hop and a skip away from the Times Square Olive Garden, a restaurant I regularly cite as the nadir of cuisine in the city.

At Serafina, all four of my colleagues ordered sparkling water as their beverage and were miffed that the restaurant didn't have large bottles. In case that didn't give us away as a big bunch of yuppies, we then spent about 45 min. talking about golf, a sport I don't play but can chitchat about. Thankfully, the food arrived quickly. My lunch was the best of times and the worst of times.

My appetizer was wonderful. Really good buffalo mozzarella - and this was the good stuff - tastes clean, fresh and faintly milky. To me, it tastes like innocence. Prosciutto, a close cousin of bacon, rarely fails to delight.

My main course was miserable. I knew I was in for it when the plate arrived with more sauce on it than pasta. Gloppy cream sauce. I scraped the sauce off as best I could, but it only revealed the shortcomings in the ravioli, the filling of which didn't taste like it had any mushrooms in it at all and looked greasy from a cross-section. Yuck.

(To be fair, based on the appearance of everyone else's food, I think I just happened upon a weak dish on the menu. The tomato-based sauces on the penne arrabbiata and rigatoni alla Bolognese both looked good.)