All I Want(ed) For Christmas Was Dinner at Bugatti

Leftovers of my pesto pasta!

A couple weeks back, my boyfriend and I were walking through Astoria, when I noticed a new little Italian restaurant that opened on the corner of 34th St and 31st Ave. The restaurant was cute and had an intimate atmosphere and once I read a review on Why Leave Astoria?! this immediately rose to the top of my bucket list.

So naturally, dinner at Bugatti was part of my Christmas gift. The restaurant has a great date atmosphere and on a Tuesday night at 9:30, a table for two was easy to come by.  One thing to note is that if you go this season and it’s a cold winter night, you may want to sit away from the windows and towards the back of the restaurant because there was definitely some cold air coming in.

To start, we received some kind of zucchini dish, compliments of the chef.  To be honest, neither Chad nor I can remember what the dish actually was, mostly because I was really concerned about my order. I was dying to try the pesto pasta with shrimp, but the waiter informed me that the kitchen was out of shrimp.  He was really patient with me, trying to help me decide on another dish, and eventually went back to the kitchen to see if they could put another fish in the dish instead, like calamari.  He claimed they found some shrimp, so I was happy and looking forward to the dish I had my heart set on.  Pasta dishes were around $15, and if I remember correctly, secondi plates (i.e. meats) were around high teens to twenties.  If you are looking for an extensive wine list, Bugatti isn’t the place just yet, but if you are on a budget (and you are reading this blog), there are glasses of wine for $5 a piece.

My dish was good, the pasta tasted homemade and the pesto was delicious and not too garlicky.  The shrimp was pretty good too, but a little tougher – I’m not sure though if it was more of a mental thing for me since I thought this shrimp could have been buried in the back of the freezer and I was consuming it.  Still, despite craving this dish, I was a little disappointed I didn’t order Chad’s dish since it was phenomenal.  He had fusilli in a cream sauce (which was pretty light for a cream sauce and not too rich) with caramelized onions and prosciutto.  It was definitely the better of the two dishes and the prosciutto and onions were so finely chopped that all the flavors just blended into the sauce.  I thought the spiral pasta was also a great choice since it easily held on to the sauce.

I enjoyed Bugatti and definitely will order the fusilli dish the next time I return.  Is it worth a trip to Astoria? No, but if you are in the neighborhood, I’d recommend checking it out.