Can’t Get Don Angie? Go Here – San Sabino NYC

On a recent trip to New York, I really want to eat at Don Angie, especially after watching an episode of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”, which featured a dish from the restaurant. Its a very tough reservation to get. I checked the RESY system almost every day. Later, I learned they had a sister restaurant called San Sabino, basically next door. This one, is seafood forward. Here was the menu:

The restaurant is gorgeous. The colors, with all the yellow, made me feel like I was in Sorrento. We started with a trio of starters including the octopus carpaccio, tricolore Sabino, and crab & mortadella dip.

The tricolore is the restaurant’s take on a Caesar salad and its mindblowingly good. I will often judge a restaurant based on their Caesar salad (I think I have the most amazing one) and this one was next level. Tons of freshness, very moist, and well balanced flavors. Then came the octopus. Below the surface, there was a sauce and some vegetables, along with what looked like BBQ chips, that added a lot of umami and crunch. Very very good. It was obvious someone brilliant had put together these two dishes. The crab and mortadella dip was good but not as mind blowing as the first two. It came with Ritz crackers which made me nostalgic. I had not had these for many years. For mains, we had the lobster triangoli and lobster roll.

The pasta was cooked well (al dente), and was good. The only thing I didn’t like that much was the lobster roll:

It was served in a croissant. The traditional lobster roll is perfect and hard to improve. This version didn’t do it for me. The ratio of “bread” to lobster meat was off and the filing did not run the length of the croissant. Although I should note that they were generous with the portion of lobster, it didn’t have any mind blowing taste like the previous dishes. I would skip this one.

Overall, service was good and the food was next level good (except for the lobster roll). I would 100% return and try other things and highly recommend this place.