April 26 and 27: Radici

[Closed June 13, 2018]

I walk past Radici on the way to work every day, yet I've always thought "it's too expensive" or "it's mainly a bar with Italian food as a side thought." I was so wrong.

I'd stopped in here a few weeks ago, not for lunch, but for the happy hour. The steamed manila clams were some of the best I've had, with cloves of garlic in the broth so flavorful and delicate they nearly dissolve on the tongue and are worth trolling the bowl for. The crispy polenta bites with honey are like little puffy cornbread squares, slightly crisp on the outside and rich and gluttonous in the middle. But that was happy hour. How's lunch? We went here to celebrate our hard-working admin, and...

O.M.G. I ordered the $9 "Rudy's Red" spaghetti, no meat, and they knocked this one out of the park. The pasta was cooked perfectly, al dente, not the slightest bit mushy or crunchy. The sauce didn't commit the sin of wateriness; tomatoes are mostly water, but it's important to cook it down, filter it out, or (scandalous!) add a thickener for a good American-style spaghetti sauce. It's also very possible that any small bits of residual liquid were absorbed by the pasta, another reason to very slightly undercook it. A few flecks of basil sprinkled across the top presented the best spaghetti I've had in months. It looked, smelled, and tasted so good, I didn't stop to take photos.

My co-workers had a meatball sandwich ($12, "heavenly!"), italian sausage ($11, "really good"), and a Lyonnaise salad featuring a breaded poached egg ($12, "it's great; I don't know how they did this!"). Service was attentive but not intrusive. A full bar is available, although the waiter wasn't sure what pilsner was on tap.

This may have jumped to the top of my list of places to suggest for informal business lunches. Il Terrazo Carmine was great, and for fancy Italian, sure, it's not a bad choice, but the food's just as good, and the prices at Radici are significantly lower.

(April 27: It was so good, I recommended it to another team of mine for lunch today. I had the meatball sandwich. Not quite as good as the spaghetti, but maybe in the top ten meatballs I've had.)

Radici
314 2nd Ave S.
April 26: Spaghetti and a drink, $15 plus tax and tip
April 27: Meatball sandwich, $12 plus tax and tip