Great Brunch at Arte Pasta

Challenge: Find a place that sits 7 girls, takes a reservation on a Sunday at 1 p.m. and offers unlimited drinks.

Answer: Arte Pasta.

With my friend Kristen back in town from Atlanta, a few of my girlfriends and I gathered for brunch last weekend to catch up. Being sorority sisters, clearly we needed to find a place that was all you can drink.

Arte Pasta down in the West Village serves brunch from noon to 4 p.m. on the weekends. On Saturdays, patrons are offered all you can drink Mimosas, Bloody Mary’s or Screwdrivers with a variety of breakfast options. Sunday on the other hand, you can get more brunch type options and all you can drink champagne or Mimosas. Cost of all you can drink - 5 dollars. The only stipulation with all you can drink is that its for 90 minutes from the moment you sit down and you can’t sit and drink if there are other groups waiting for your tables. Sadly, some of younger girls (aka my friend Kristin) were excited about the time limit because it brought her back to her days of chugging at drink ups.

Service was great. While I would have loved it if Arte Pasta could have put the pitcher of mimosas on our table, I was impressed that someone was at our table every few minutes refilling our glasses to the top. At one point though, our mimosas all of a sudden tasted like they had Jager in it. When we mentioned it to our waiter, he trusted us, even sipped a couple of glasses and encouraged other staff members to taste it to make sure we all weren’t losing our minds. He went as far to personally mix our mimosas himself in order for them to taste better, and even handed over to us a bottle of champagne. The fact that he wore an angel costume through a portion of the meal (a halo) made my afternoon as well.

As far as the food went, there were no complaints from any of us. Every entree was $9.95, with certain dishes costing a few bucks extra (like steak and eggs). Our table also came with some mini blueberry muffins, which were certainly delicious. I went with a burger and fries for my brunch, and the burger was huge. It came on foccacia bread, which was good - I ended up eating most of the bread and not as much burger only because it was a little difficult to pick up. Fries were good though and the meal was just what I needed to get over my rough Saturday night.

Arte Pasta is the perfect place for catching up with a group of friends. We ended up staying at the restaurant til 4, even though refills on drinks had ended almost an hour and a half earlier. No one rushed us out and I left feeling full of good food and great company.