A cozy, intimate setting to enjoy delicious food
Last month, Osteria Accademia launched their new brunch menu. Located in the Upper West Side, Osteria Accademia’s mission is to provide the Upper West Side community with a cozy spot where guests can gather over good food and wine while losing track of time over stimulating conversation. Stepping foot into Osteria Accademia, you can tell this restaurant has a charm to it. The entire dining room is set up where each wall is a bookshelf that houses a variety of books. The dining room itself is small but provides an intimate feel when you’re there. The menu for brunch has all the classic brunch dishes with an Italian flare. And for drinks, Osteria Accademia has red, white, and sparkling wines as well as a selection of mimosas and bellinis. And it wouldn’t be a brunch if there wasn’t a bottomless option as well.
The Fennel salad was a must have, especially since it was featured in the New York Times. This salad came with shaved fennel, pistachios, olives, and oranges. The shaved fennel was light and maintained a lot of the herbaceous notes that you come to expect from fennel. The pistachios help balance that herbaceousness with the nutty flavor. But the star that ties everything together were the oranges that provided a bright sweetness that helped tone down some of the other flavors in the dish.
For our mains we opted for a savory dish and a sweet dish in hopes of capturing the essence of brunch dining. We ordered the Omelette Neri first which is a squid ink omelette paired with wild mushrooms, mozzarella, and pecorino. The omelette was seasoned perfectly and had such the right amount of salt to let the natural egg flavors shine. The wild mushrooms were the star for us and burst with umami flavors throughout. The cheeses played a part in the dish as well with the mozzarella and pecorino adding a saltiness to the dish and helped balance some of the earthiness of the mushrooms.
Our overall thoughts of Osteria Accademia was that both the food and drinks on the brunch menu were worth coming back for. Not only that, but we definitely see ourselves stopping by again not only to eat but to take in the beautiful ambiance and atmosphere that Osteria Accademia has cultivated inside the doors of their restaurant. And with their new brunch menu having such a wide variety of Italian brunch items, we can’t wait to come back and try more.