The Williamsburg Pasta Room That Rewards a 9:55 AM Alarm
Missy Robbins turned a Brooklyn car body shop into the pasta room the city plans its month around. The mafaldini is why.
The mafaldini arrives twisted into a nest, dressed in pink peppercorn and Parmigiano, and the smell hits before the plate lands. This is the pasta that has held the room together since 2016, the reason people set 9:55 AM alarms four weeks in advance, the dish Missy Robbins gets asked about in every profile ever written about her. It has not left the menu. It should not leave the menu. It is the single best argument for putting a Williamsburg dinner on the calendar a month out.
Robbins opened Lilia in a converted East Williamsburg car body shop and later spun off Misi a few blocks toward the river. The room — wood beams, lofty ceilings, a massive wood-fired grill against the back wall — has spent a decade near the top of every serious Brooklyn list. The city has more pasta rooms now than it did in 2016. Lilia is still the reference point.
Editorial Deep
Order the mafaldini with pink peppercorn and the sheep's milk cheese agnolotti with saffron, dried tomato and honey. That is the pasta course. The agnolotti sounds like it might be too much — sweet honey, funky sheep's milk, the tomato — and instead it lands as the most complete bite on the menu. Start with the focaccia, which oozes olive oil in a way that makes the bread course a real course, and the cacio e pepe fritelle, Roman-style sweet doughnuts blown out with cheese and pepper. The clams still hold up. Stay for the gelato.
The bones of the car body shop are still there and the room is better for it. High wood-beam ceilings, exposed brick, plaster walls, a long marble bar running toward the open kitchen, and the wood-fired grill throwing light against the back wall. Banquette seating along the walls, two-tops down the middle, counter stools at the bar. Lighting is warm sconce-and-pendant, not candle-dim. Sound carries but never gets punishing.
Service is warm, informed, and unhurried in a way that reads as deliberate rather than slow. Servers know the pasta program cold, will steer you off a dish that duplicates something you already ordered, and pace the courses so the agnolotti does not land on top of the mafaldini. The wine list is all-Italian and tight, and the staff will happily route you into a lower-priced bottle without treating it as a compromise. Negronis and Milano Sours are executed properly.
The pasta and the room justify the check; the rest of the menu is along for the ride. What you are paying for is Robbins' pasta program in a space that would command the number in Manhattan and takes a slight Brooklyn discount here. The critique some regulars make — that the difficulty of getting in has outrun the difficulty of the food — has some weight when the check arrives after a middling secondi. Build the order correctly and the math holds.
Yes, monthly if you lived in the neighborhood, three or four times a year from anywhere else in the city. The mafaldini is the kind of dish you build a return trip around, and the room is one of the few in Brooklyn that still feels like an occasion ten years in. The version of Lilia that disappoints is the one where you order around the pasta instead of into it. Do it the other way and it holds.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Mafaldini with pink peppercorn; sheep's milk agnolotti; focaccia; cacio e pepe fritelle
“The Williamsburg pasta room the city still measures others against.”
Go for the mafaldini, the agnolotti, and anything off the wood-fired grill; if the 28-day Resy drop beats you, the walk-in bar at opening is the real workaround. If you want the same pasta program without the booking sport, Misi a few blocks away is the sister restaurant and takes a reservation more easily.
The Verdict
