I'm kinda sorta on an Italian restaurant kick now, so when InKind had their crazy spend $100+ get $100 off select restaurants deal, I decided the best way to spend it was at Soda Club, a vegan Italian restuarant boasting a large selection of natural wines in the East Village.
It had everything going for it. A 4.5+ star Google Maps score. A Bib Gourmand distinction. Cozy ambiance on a quieter street in Alphabet City. Part of award-winning vegan hospitality group from James Beard-nominated Ravi Derossi, Overthrow Hospitality, which owns one of my favorite plant-based restaurant in the city, Cadence.
AND it's fully vegan. My partner is vegan. When we go out with friends or to most restaurants, he has one or two choices that suit his dietary restrictions and preferences. It brings me three sunny ☀️🌱 spring day's worth of delight to watch him excitedly decide what to order on an entire menu's worth of vegan dishes.
Unfortunately, the delight at Soda Club was short-lived.
When we arrive on the earlier side (6PM) of the last Sunday in April, the only people there were a couple on their pasta courses eating at the intimate, room-for-two bar in front of the storefront window. The friendly man behind the bar came forward to check us in since I had made a reservation, and then told us we could to sit at whatever 2-person table struck or fancy or the bar.
The small space was obviously decorated for sultry date nights: tables for two opposite the bar, and only two larger 6-8 person tables farther back. Soda Club is moody lighting, dark jade velvet chairs and dark jade walls, and vintage-looking pendant lights.
We took a seat the bar as close as possible to the front for the light, but even there the dark, coziness grabbed at us.
The late sunlight shone bright on the other couple as they watched the infrequent passerby. They by far had the best seat in the house.
My partner and I were celebrating so the server (who was also working as bartender) served us two half glasses of rosé on the house. When we couldn't decide between a glass of the Aaron Burr Cidery Elder Pomme ($14) and more rosé, the server kindly let us taste the cider. Our server was warm, unstuffy, and very friendly.
The menu Soda Club had online was similar to the menu in the restaurant, give or take a few (probably) seasonal ingredients on staple dishes missing, two seasonal pastas, and a gnocchi special. We ordered:
- [Appetizer] Herbed ricotta ($16)
- [Appetizer] Extra focaccia ($3)
- Watercress salad ($18)
- [Pasta] Gigli ($19)
- [Pasta] Cappelletti ($24)
- [Pasta] Fiochetti ($21)
- [Alcoholic drink] a glass of the Aaron Burr Cidery Elder Pomme ($14)
The herbed ricotta ($16) was clean-tasting in a way only almond-based plant-based "dairy" is which we appreciated, but I didn't find it very herby. The tomatoes it came with added a nice bit of acid toned down from the head of roasting to the creaminess of the ricotta, but was nothing special. It also came with "focaccia."
As a high hydration bread dough, focaccia usually has a very open and irregular crumb. It's pillowy and light, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. For example, the focaccia at Ci Siamo, which is my favorite focaccia in the city. It has a very distinct olive oil flavor without being oily.
The focaccia Soda Club served along side the ricotta was sliced unexpectedly thin. The crumb was pretty tight, the holes small and uniform. 💀😭 We were so perplexed we wondered where the focaccia was and ordered extra focaccia ($3).
We were baffled. The same flavorless, dense thing. In the second picture above, you can tell that the focaccia was even underbaked when you look at the top-most part of the slice: there is a stripe of dough close to my index finger that lacks any holes. You see the same stripe on the focaccia in the picture to the left, on the plate.
Big yikes. 😱 Focaccia is generally vegan. Focaccia is generally plant-based. Focaccia is generally vegetarian. I repeat this three times because absolutely NOTHING needs to be done to focaccia in order to make it vegan. The bread Soda Club served us that day was NOT focaccia.
We enjoyed the watercress salad ($18). The roasted grapes were a delightful, sweet addition. While the vegan feta didn't nail the taste of authentic, Greek feta, texturally it was close and the flavor was something adjacent in a satisfying way. My partner, who isn't fond of coconut-oil based plant-based cheese, disagreed and avoided each creamy white cube, so more for me!
Onto the pasta dishes! They were larger than I expected. If you have a similar appetite as me, one is plenty.
List "truffle" as an ingredient in a dish and I'm all over it. I chose the Gigli ($19) because it touted truffle cream. Gigli, also known as campanelle. Campanelle means 'bellflowers' or 'little bells' in Italian. Gigli are shaped like, you guessed it, little bell-shaped flowers or cones with a ruffled skirt. Their shape reminds me of one of my favorite mushrooms, black trumpet mushrooms 🥰. Texture and choice matters when pairing pasta shape with sauce. I liked this choice. And the pasta was perfectly al dente. The pasta in all of the pasta dishes was cooked well and was the best part of the pasta dishes because everything else about the dishes was not good at all.
The Gigli was bland and under-salted. The plant-based "cream" sauce was flavorless and watery and pooled at the bottom of the shallow pasta bowl.
Tempted by the promise of morel mushrooms (another favorite!), we ordered the Cappelletti ($24). Spoiler: It's 1.5 morel mushrooms served on top and maybe half of a ground morel in the filling. 🧐
Once upon a time, the cappelletti at Soda Club was served in a vegetable brodo. The many images on Google Maps you'll find of the cappelletti is of the stuffed pasta in a vegetable brodo. This was served in a bit of porcini roux. You'd think the porcini would add a TON of umami. It did not. Soda Club's vegan cappelletti was bland and under-salted. The filling was stodgy (shout out to Great British Baking Show), the pasta wrapping too thick. I'm not a master of pasta shapes, but (nitpick) these cappelletti also weren't exactly shaped as cappelletti should be.
We ended the pasta course with the Fiochetti ($21). Of the three pasta dishes we ordered, my partner thought this was the best one. He reaffirmed that all of the pastas were lackluster and mediocre, but if he had to choose one, he'd choose the fiochetti. He liked sweet flavor of the corn filling, but found it as stodgy as the filling in the cappelletti. And again: super thick wrapper. We both loved the nicely browned maitake mushrooms placed between each dumpling. I was unsure what the sweet potato chips on the side added to the dish, but I enjoyed the crunchy snack.
*Le sigh.*
At the start of dinner, we were excited for dessert and couldn't decide between their plant-based cannoli and their vegan date cake. By the end, we just wanted to pay the bill and leave.
The conclusion? Bland, under-salted, and over-priced. It's been awhile since I've been this disappointed.
We definitely won't be returning to Soda Club. I hate to say it, but I'm honestly surprised Soda Club was awarded a Bib Gourmand. I loved plant-based vegan restaurant Jajaja in the West Village (but locations other places!) the first time I went and highly recommend it. I recommend Jajaja over Anixi (even though they have Chunk Steak) and Soda Club if you're specifically looking for a vegan/vegetarian or plant-based restuarant in NYC.
Looking specifically for vegan Italian restaurants in NYC? The only other Italian vegan restaurant I know of in Manhattan is Coletta in Kips Bay, which I have yet to eat at. Coletta looks a lot more promising than Soda Club, so I urge you to consider enjoying a couple dishes, including vegan pasta and a cultured vegan cheeseboard, there instead of Soda Club. I refuse to believe that Soda Club is the best vegan Italian restaurant NYC has to offer. If it is, YIKES.
If you don't want to heed my warnings, reservations for Soda Club can be made via Resy. Good luck with whatever vegan restaurant in NYC you choose.
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