The Williamsburg Pasta Room Behind the Resy Fight
Missy Robbins' second act on the Williamsburg waterfront runs a menu of ten pastas and ten antipasti, and the fettuccine alone justifies the reservation math.
The pasta room is behind glass. You can watch someone in whites press occhi shells while you eat, which sounds like a gimmick and is not — it's the visual argument for why this menu is only twenty items long. Missy Robbins built Misi around a self-imposed limit: ten pastas, ten antipasti, and a room that lets you see how the sausage, or rather the tortelli, gets made.
Robbins already had Lilia a mile up the waterfront and a James Beard on the shelf when Misi opened on Kent Avenue, in the base of the 325 Kent tower facing Domino Park. The pitch was that this would be the pasta-focused sibling — narrower, more disciplined, harder to get into. All three have held. The pasta here has a real case against Lilia's, which is not a sentence you often write about a chef's second restaurant.
Editorial Deep
The fettuccine with buffalo butter, parmigiano extra vecchio, and black pepper is the order. Springy, glossy, aggressively peppered — it reads like a cacio e pepe that went to finishing school. It has been on the menu since day one for a reason. After that, the spinach and mascarpone tortelli in brown butter with ricotta salata, which arrive taut and burst warm, and the sheep's milk ricotta occhi with bottarga and lemon, which is the dish that makes you understand why lemon zest is an ingredient and not a garnish.
The space runs along the ground floor of 325 Kent with tall windows onto Domino Park and the water beyond, which makes it bright by Italian-restaurant standards, and the brightness suits it. The pasta room sits behind glass at the back, lit like a small stage, and it does more for the atmosphere than any candle would.
Service is warm and paced correctly, which at a pasta-forward restaurant matters more than most places — undercooked timing on the antipasti-to-pasta handoff can tank a meal here, and Misi handles it. Staff know the menu cold, which they should given there are twenty items on it.
The pasta pricing tracks with what Robbins is doing at Lilia and roughly with the Don Angie tier of Italian in this city — which is to say, not cheap and not indefensible. The fettuccine and the tortelli justify the number; the antipasti are where the value can wobble if you order the wrong two.
Yes, on a specific rotation — a couple of times a year, always for the fettuccine, always at the counter or the bar if the Resy drop didn't go your way. It's not a weekly restaurant even if you lived across the street, because the menu is deliberately narrow and you'd cycle through it.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Fettuccine with buffalo butter, parmigiano and black pepper; spinach and mascarpone tortelli; ricotta toast to start
“The fettuccine wins the argument for why this menu is only twenty items long.”
Go for the pasta, know the Resy drop, and if you lose it, walk in for a bar seat — Misi always takes them, and most people don't realize that's the actual answer here.
The Verdict
