Pulino's in SoHo.

Last Saturday night, my friend Lizzie and I tried Pulino's in SoHo for
dinner, and it was definitely a worthy find. It was written up by
UrbanDaddy about a month ago, so it was on my radar and sounded
interesting.. And oh, it was.

It was crazy busy on Saturday right at prime time. The bistro-like restaurant is impossible to miss with its big neon red sign right on the corner of Houston & Bowery. The restaurant itself had some really cool architectural features, like it's either an older space that's been redone, or they just created it to look that way. Oh, and all the decoration on the walls is rows and rows of various types of whiskey. It was pretty cool. My only complaint was that it's a small-ish space, and the noise just bounced off all those whiskey bottles and the chamber ceilings. Hard to carry a conversation on a Saturday night. Oh well.

Annnd best of all, the food. The minute I walked in the door, the first thing I noticed was the delicious smell. It smelled like fresh baking pizza dough and garlic and delicious smokey meats and sausages. We started at the bar for their list of signature cocktails (I had a cocktail with sparkling wine and limoncello), then sat down (after we waited 45 minutes for a table) for a crunchy escarole salad with roasted mushrooms that could have been right off the forest floor, fresh crispy bruschetta with a spreadable salami topping (I couldn't even begin to explain this, just try it), and split a pizza with spicy salami, black olives, and fresh rosemary. The crust was paper thin and super crispy, and the fresh mozzarella was perfectly bubbly, but not drowning out the other flavors of the pizza like some cheese-a-holic pizza places.

The pizza's are medium-smallish, maybe 12 or 14 inches? Because of the thin crust, you could definitely eat one alone, but I recommend splitting one so you can try all the other delicious things on the menu. Or for more people, get a few pizzas and share!

But save room for the dessert menu--there are a lot of great options, including ice cream sundaes with fresh berries & pistachios. Highly recommended.

I may have just found my favorite pizza (so far) in NY.