Beautifully decorated, charming Italian restaurant, located inside the New-York Historical Society. It has the sense of class and fancy-ness.  The kitchen is by the counter seating across the booth, you can see them cook your meal. They offer lunch, brunch, and dinner. They have quite nice size wine list (all Italian!).

It is certainly a great location, right by Central Park and inside a museum, it will be suitable for anyone from locals and tourists to enjoy a nice Italian food. You can take a stroll in the Park after the meal, walk around the museum, get together with your family and friends, or have a romantic dinner date!

I recently visited this gorgeous restaurant on the weekend for brunch. The inside was very open with tall ceiling which had several beautiful chandeliers, and bright interior with lots of large windows. The furniture was simple but yet elegant, the wooden chair was very comfortable. Since there is no wall/divider in the restaurant, it can get a bit noisy when it is near full house. The tables are placed with enough space in between, so as to not feel over-crowded. Staff were polite and professional, the service level was nice, had no complaints.

Their brunch menu offer nice selection of appetizers, breakfast items, pasta, and panini. They also offer great brunch cocktail menu as well. We started with Smoked Salmon appetizer ($14) which comes with potato rosti, crème fraîche & capers. This dish was AMAZING, so much better than I imagined it, therefore it disappeared quickly. The salmon was fresh, and potato rosti on the bottom was flavorful and crunchy, providing additional texture to the smoked salmon. The potato rosti was cut into 4 pieces, so it was easy to eat and share.

We moved on to our main dish, we ordered Italian Toast ($14) with ricotta cheesecake filled brioche & macerated berrie, and Spaghetti Carbonara ($16) with pancetta & sunny side egg. The filling inside the Italian Toast was rich, creamy, not overly sweet, and simply delicious! It already looked good, but how it tasted was so much better than anticipated. The toast was still fluffy, airy, and made the entire dish to be satisfying without being too heavy even though it was large portion.

The Spaghetti Carbonara, however, was a bit disappointing. The seasoning was so strong and it made it so salty, made it impossible eat without washing it down with water. Maybe some people enjoy the very strong seasoning taste, or maybe it was just a particular chef on this day that use too much seasoning on his/her creation…? Regardless, the pasta had great texture, the real home-made feel to it. Cooked perfectly, firm but not too hard, it would even be great on its own. The egg was also cooked to perfection, if it didn’t have the crazy strong seasoning, this dish would have been amazing.

And of course we had to have desserts… We ordered cappuccino ($4.5), latte ($5), and bomboloni ($8) with lemon, nutella & fruit fillings. The cappuccino was nice and smooth, and latte came in a tall glass cup, and also nice and smooth. The coffee flavor was good and strong, but still light and calming. Bomboloni is basically donuts with sweet fillings. Each filling was very tasty, the dough was moist but light, just a little dessert heaven… With nice cup of coffee (without adding any sugar) make them a perfect pair!

We walked over the Central Park afterwords to burn off all the food we ate, which is great and refreshing. Really love the location of this restaurant.  Yes I would definitely go back to try some other dishes!

Caffè Storico, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024