So, you’ve been tasked with planning a dinner for 8 people on an upcoming Saturday night. The toughest reservations are likely out of the question, and you don’t really want to spend your lunch break walk to Just Salad calling a bunch of places. Inevitably, you’re going to end up scrolling through OpenTable, looking at a bunch of Italian restaurants you’ve never heard of, Googling their menus, and not being sure if the one you settle on will cause your group to unseat you from the position of “Restaurant Chooser” moving forward.

Should you find yourself in this situation, allow us to endorse Galli. Galli is a lively Italian spot in Soho with big tables and surprisingly good food. The cuisine is “Italian comfort,” which means a lot of red sauce classics, but this is Soho so it also means there’s a kale salad.

By the time you get some grilled seafood, a pasta or two, a chicken parm, some bottles of wine, and the highly reasonable resulting check on your table, we bet your crew will have forgotten about that dramatic string of emails from earlier in the week about choosing a dinner location.

Food Rundown

Grilled Calamari

Grilled calamari can be a total hit or miss - the appetizer here is a cooked-just-right hit.

Kale Salad

A kale salad topped with oranges, almonds, carrots, and avocado. You know the deal.

Tegamino

Galli succeeds in the parm department. We recommend this appetizer-size eggplant parm.

Chicken Parm

And for a group, you’ll want an entrée-sized chicken parm, which comes with a side of spaghetti. If it helps at all, we actually prefer the grilled version to the breaded.

Penne Vodka

Always a sure bet. Also: you can get any of the pastas gluten free, should that be your thing.

Spaghetti Pesto

One of those homestyle, very Italian, almost milky pesto sauces.