Rosella
Where everybody knows your name… or acts like it at least.
Last Friday, Viraj and I spontaneously went out to dinner at Delmonico’s, ambitiously having a full steakhouse dinner at the bar. My love for Delmonico’s is evergrowing: I mean, how is it possible that their crab cake gets better and better each time I have it… This evening was our first time sitting at their bar, a separate room off to the side of the main restaurant, and the energy was palpably different. It wasn’t exactly rowdy, but it was probably as rowdy as an establishment like Delmonico’s could get, with groups cycling in and out, greeting each other and addressing the bartenders by name. As I sipped my Delmonico’s martini, the thought occurred to me: Does everyone here know each other except for me?
I’ve always wanted to be a regular somewhere, to have a home away from home in the form of a restaurant. It seems like a marker of having lived somewhere for long enough, and with a few years of New York under my belt, I have a rotation of some go-to places. But no restaurants yet… or at least none where they seemed to have started recognizing me.
Most of that is on me. I’m constantly adding to my list of restaurants I want to go to, and it often feels like a wasted opportunity to return to somewhere familiar. And this self-imposed pressure to always go somewhere new, especially for more expensive meals, means that I find myself in situations where I’ve only been to my go-to answer for “favorite New York City restaurant” once.
I first ate at Rosella in January 2023 (pre-OMB!) on the recommendation of my friends Talia and Neeraj. It was Viraj’s birthday, and if my camera roll from back then is any indication, it seems like all we did that week was eat. I only took one photo—a birthday candle sticking out of their sorbet, the flavor lost to time—but it then became the one restaurant I evangelized over and over again.
As you can imagine, it was quite surprising to realize two years later that I had never been back again. Memories of that one meal, with barely proof that we were even there, stayed with me through what were probably hundreds of meals out. And while the food was excellent (more on that in a second), the people are what makes Rosella such a standout restaurant.
The restaurant is intimate, with the main seating arranged along a bar that circles the kitchen on three sides. There’s a great view of all the happenings of the kitchen from any seat, and it gives an overall effect of hovering by a friend’s kitchen counter as they prepare dinner. Viraj and I recently returned to Rosella and sat a few seats down from our first visit: the best seats in the house are at the sushi bar, where they once served an omakase. (Now, it’s at Bar Miller.)
The feeling of eating at a friend’s place extends beyond the general setup of the restaurant: though you can just order off of the menu like normal, during both of our visits, we started a conversation with the chef, which led to an omakase-like experience, us collaborating with the chef to determine our perfect meal. Throughout our meal, the restaurant staff checked in with us like old friends, asking what we thought about certain dishes and if we had room for more in between bits of banter amongst themselves. And to add to the general are we just all hanging out atmosphere, during our more recent visit, Talia and Neeraj popped in after their dinner around the corner to say hi, raising their voices to reach across the entire restaurant to us in the back corner. It was sweet and embarrassing and no one in the restaurant batted an eye…
But what makes Rosella a truly exceptional restaurant beyond just being the most fun environment to eat in is the food, of course! They’re kind of a sushi restaurant, but they’re really a celebration of seafood, with an emphasis on sustainably sourced domestic species. And in a sea of high-end sushi restaurants (pun intended) that are flying in their seafood from across the globe, Rosella shows that there is a more sustainable way of eating sushi that’s just as luxurious.
Rosella does a brilliant job of highlighting these less common seafoods through sushi—definitely ask the staff what they’d recommend. I tried pickled mussel sushi for the first time, which I found too acidic for my taste, but it was undoubtedly unlike any sushi I had ever had before. (Viraj loved it.) The shrimp nigiri was also outside of my usual sushi preferences, but an excellent suggestion from the chef. We got two rolls: fatty tuna & white kimchi and spicy tuna. I appreciate that Rosella can take relatively familiar items and put their own spin on it, like using thick cuts of tuna and fresh herbs for the spicy tuna roll.
It might be tempting to skip the other dishes, but don’t. My favorite dish of the meal was the summer sashimi: albacore, pickled Nardello salsa and ponzu. It highlights great quality fish with an unexpected twist, combining the sweetness of Nardello peppers with the citrus of ponzu. The fish sausage sliders were also incredible, with a fluffy bun and a patty made of thick cuts of various fish that you can really taste. At this point of the meal we were pretty full. But, Viraj still had his eye on the XO grits, so we ordered a half portion. Like every dish at Rosella, it was much more nuanced than expected, a supremely fishy (complimentary) and savory concoction that tasted like the ocean… if it was cheesy?
Though we were so unbelievably full at this point in the meal, dessert at Rosella is just as special as everything else. They had a corn nut ice cream the night we were there, which we happily ordered alongside the miso carrot cake. The ice cream reminded me of Milk Bar’s cereal milk flavor, but also tasted exactly like corn nuts… Impressive. I will always order a carrot cake if it’s on the menu (and theirs is good!), but this ice cream was so complex and interesting. And it’s always good to end a meal with a thinker, I think!
Though I haven’t successfully befriended the people at Rosella, there’s something so special about a restaurant in such a big city that makes you feel like you’re their best friends… even if it’s just for the night.
Bite It!
Maddeningly, Rosella has not gotten easier to book over the years. Browse reservations on Resy, and I’d recommend going with a party of two due to the format of the restaurant.