NYCReview
photo credit: Clemens Kois
10 Corso Como
This spot is Permanently Closed.
Included In
On a recent trip to 10 Corso Como in the Seaport, we saw a $350 bar of soap, a designer headstone that says “The End,” and a blue crocodile handbag on display. This luxury retail store is gaudy, excessive, and makes for prime window shopping, kind of like the house on the block that takes Christmas decorations way too seriously, or Soho. The restaurant that’s attached to the retail space is also a spectacle, but there’s no food equivalent of window shopping. So the amusement you feel when you realize that the bar of soap is actually a three-foot-tall synthetic design piece doesn’t carry over. Instead, you’ll end up overpaying for forgettable food.
The dining portion of this all-in-one store, gallery, and restaurant, which is based in Milan and has a few other locations around the world, looks like a cruise ship cafeteria straight out of a Hunter S. Thompson acid trip. The multi-room space has black leather booths, curtains that twinkle like tiaras, and hanging lights that make you feel like a scuba diver looking up at a school of jellyfish. The layout is tacky but amusing, especially because the Balenciaga-sneaker-comes-to-life aesthetic is accompanied by some great people watching. Take it all in, and maybe even drink a negroni at an outdoor table overlooking the cobblestone streets of the Seaport, but don’t come here to eat.
photo credit: Clemens Kois
The straightforward Italian menu at 10 Corso Como has five appetizers, pastas, and entrees, but no matter how you order, you’re going to leave feeling like you would’ve been better off spending that money on that designer headstone, or at countless other Italian spots downtown. There are beef meatballs topped with cheese and served in a deep pool of tomato sauce, which sounds about as likely to succeed as Blue Ivy, but the meatballs taste like fatty bites of burger meat, the tomato sauce isn’t acidic or salty enough, and the mozzarella disappears after a couple bites. With the exception of the cacio e pepe - the best dish here - things don’t improve when you move onto the pastas. The overcooked linguini is served with sandy clams, and the risotto includes a watery cheese sauce that somehow tastes more like soap than saffron.
Like the appetizers and pastas, the entrees have so little flavor that it seems purposeful. The only difference is that these large plates are two to three times more expensive. The $37 swordfish only tastes like blackened char from the grill, and even the capers and tomatoes - two ingredients that are usually polarizing for being too strong - contribute as much as an unprepared introvert at book club. You get 18 ounces of steak in the $59 tagliata, but it’s offensively mild, and for about the same price, you could have bought Salvador Dali’s surrealist cookbook in the retail space next door.
Somewhere between Dali’s cookbook in the back corner and the giant bar of soap up front, you might find something you’re happy to spend money on at 10 Corso Como. It just won’t be in the restaurant.