Is Piada Just a Fancy Italian Word for Quesadilla?
Last week Piada NYC opened in the basement of the Citycorp building (on 53rd and Lex), becoming the latest place to bring some sort of strange, yuppiefied version of supposedly ethnic food stuffs to Midtown. Following in the footsteps of Kolache Mama (Czech pastries by way of Texas), Kushi Q (yakitori), and Danku (Dutch croquettes), Piada’s menu is all about the authentic “Italian flatbread sandwich” (?) There is already a location on the LES, so some of you might have already partaken in the joy of the piada. For me, Friday in the Citycorp building was a first (a Piada virgin if you will.)
Check out what we ordered, after the jump…
The Piada menu is pretty simple. Chosen one of 8 already created sandwich combinations ($8 each) or create your own piada ($6 for one ingredient, $7 for 2, $8 for 3… limit one meat and one cheese per sandwich). The ingredients are very Italian, with assorted meats and cheeses being offered alongside veggies and herbs like roasted eggplant, red peppers, basil, and arugula.
#1 seemed to be the industry standard (proscuitto, mozzarella, and arugula) so we got one of those.
I’m also a big fan of speck, so #8 made the cut (speck, fontina, and basil).
And finally, the “sandwiches” seemed to be kind of thin, so I tried to make my own- going for ingredients that I thought would make for a more hefty piada. Chicken + Roasted Eggplant + Pecorino. It was certainly thicker than the other two, although I was disappointed that the chicken was sliced to be more like deli meat than real grilled chicken.
None of the three tasted bad, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had been duped into eating a standard flatbread quesadilla thing that every single generic Midtown deli offers (and was charged $8 for the privilege.) There is no question that the ingredients are a higher quality than your average deli, but in the end the piada is not really a revelation. The bread doesn’t taste much better than your average quesadilla, and there are plenty of places to get something like this already.
Is it bad? Not at all. Will a lot of people who work in the area be all about this place? No question about it. Is it something Midtown Lunch’ers should get super excited about? Uh… not sure. Anybody else tried it? Feel free to disagree in the comments.
THE +
- I like proscuitto. I like mozzarella. I like quesadillas. It’s Piada time!
- The ingredients are nicer than what you’d get in a generic Midtown deli, and I don’t mind paying the extra $$
THE –
- I don’t care how good the ingredients are, I’m not really that interested in a yuppie-fied, Italian quesadilla
Piada, 601 Lexington Ave. (on 53rd St. in the Citycorp Building)
Posted by Zach Brooks at 11:45 am, November 16th, 2009 under Piada, Review.
15 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
i think piada = piadina = italian flatbread (there’s a restaurant called Piadina on lower 6th, they serve pretty good piadinas. around $9 or $10).
Zach, are those things served hot or cold? I can’t tell in the pictures.