Accademia di Vino (CLOSED)

The food is blah......service is non existant....wait stuff is spaced out......it's not worth the price at all. Plenty of better places in this area. Do not waste your money!

This place should warrant a better review then it is going to get from me. I walked into the room and was impressed with the look of it. From the warm wood to the numerous bottles of wine, this room looks like a place that is inviting and professional. And while some of the food lives up to its expectations, mostly this place misses just enough to make us not want to return. And what can you say about the service that has not been covered in previous posts? Only that the staff seems to have had any semblance of their personalities surgically removed. And there are so many of them. But they stand around looking quite lost at best and uninterested at worst. We had a number of the appetizers which were uniformly good and fresh. The various cold vegetables were flavorful and interesting. And while the “gnocchi” is more like polenta, it was tasty. The main courses were ok but the side dishes were off (including spinach that had to be sent back for which the charges were removed from the bill- thanks). The warm chocolate cake was not quite what was expected. I think they wanted to make a warm gooey center cake but it seemed to have been cooked to long but was served barely warm. And the pistachio ice cream was filled with ice crystals giving it an odd texture. I just wanted everything to be just a little bit better than it was. But I might be willing to return if the service was better (or even had a hint of a personality). But who needs to eat so-so food with a staff that seems to be verging on depressed. Not me.

Not expecting much and was blown away.

A first time visit here for the four of us. It was chosen by someone else and when I read the reviews here I wondered why. I must have eaten at a different Accademia di Vino than many of you. The space is lovely, busy but never loud. We were seated promptly at a comfortable table and unlike many restaurants in New York, not right on top of another table. Our server was wonderful! She paid great attention to us and had fun doing it. She made very good recommendations when asked and was never intrusive yet always there for us. Water glasses always filled, wine topped off and the table kept clear and set ahead for each course. The food was great. Salads were perfectly dressed and interesting. I had the Tre Colore with goat cheese fritters. The fritters were crispy while light and fluffy and a perfect addition to the tartly dressed lettuces. For my main I had the sopressata pizza. Delicious. Thin, thin, thin crispy gilled crust topped with just the right amount of mozzarella, dollops of ricotta and slices of sopressata - and big enough to share. The four of us shared two desserts. I've had tiramisu 332 times in my life and this might be the best. The fudge brownie? Really fudgy, with ice cream, caramel sauce and fresh berries. Even the coffee was good. I manage a restaurant here in New York and I'm really not too easily pleased. Tonight I was. All of us were.

My husband and I ate here 3 times between us and both agreed that the service has gone way down hill. I sat at the bar for almost 15 minutes without a drink - the bartender handed me a menu then turned away to put in the food order of the couple sitting next to me - I can completely understand him putting in their order only he never turned back around. When my husband arrived I got up and it wasn't for several more minutes before the bartender turned around with his arms folded and stood there looking completely unfriendly. I felt sorry for my waiter because he was obviously really busy, but the service was nowhere near what it should have been - we waited a long time to order, no one ever came to refill our wine glasses, we waited over 10 minutes after we got the dessert menus, even though we asked someone else to send our waiter over. The table next to us had to flag down the sommelier. It's a real shame because the food is good, but the service needs to come up to par.

Here is the real deal from a wine bar enthusiast. Very very good food, nice selection of hot and cold antipasti, salads, pastas and mains. Did not get one dish that was not excellent. Now for the negatives- I have lived in Italy and typically I like a wine bar to have an authentic rustic feel to it. The space is huge with a more modern approach. That being said, this is the Upper East Side we are talking about, not soho so I'll cut them some slack. Wine list is very extensive however, wines by the glass were very expensive. They did have a nice selection of Barbaresco's, Barolos, Barbera's, albeit not one of them were less than 15 dollars a glass. They did have decent Chianti and a Roso Di Montalcino for around 10 a glass, but who wants to get a boring glass of Chianti at a wine bar. Bottom line is that the food is great and the place is interesting, which is a hard combination to get for the UES. Went and had nice meal for about 120 bucks. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Amazing service and food. We sat at the bar and had great salad, wine and pizza. Fun environment for a saturday night, pretty young crowd. Highly recommended.