Wednesday at Lupa

One of the first restaurants Michael and I went to when we moved to NYC over 10 years ago was (at the time) the fairly new Lupa http://www.luparestaurant.com in Greenwich Village.  We fell in love with the Roman style Italian food, the brainchild of Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich, who went on to open other Italian restaurants in the City, Los Angeles (Osteria Mozza), and Las Vegas.  What impressed us the most was the quality was always great, every time we returned.  It's not cheap, but for NYC, not outrageous either.  We hadn't been in quite a while (because of our eating at home quirk) but went a few weeks ago, and vowed to return more frequently. 

Let me admit that one of the ways we discover new dishes is to copy as best we can what we eat out and love.  Today's food was a bit more than we will undertake at home except for one dish, the celery root-apple-kale salad.  Here is what we had minus the photo we missed taking of the Apician dates each stuffed with an almond, sitting on a little bed of marscapone and a port sauce extraordinaire. 

Oh, and we had 2 carafes (little 1/4 liter ones) of wine.  A great lunch, and a lovely day. 

Later. 

Broccoli Rabe with lemon zest and some kind of cheese

Agnoletti stuffed with squash in a butter-balsamico sauce

celery root/apple/lemon zest/EVO/kale/bitter greens