Frankie’s 570

The people behind Frankies Spuntino in the LES and in Brooklyn just opened a new outpost in West Village. I’ve tried Frankies in the LES and it’s good. The sandwiches are the bee’s knees but the LES space is so small the waits can be long.  Wandering through the streets last Saturday, Cookie Monster and I stopped into the new West Village location for some grub.  He had heard about this place opening up from Page Six and when we found that the wait at Cafe Cluny was 30-45 minutes, we headed over to Frankie’s 570.

The place is cute with lots of wood and windows. Much bigger than its LES counterpart.  Very “West Village” in terms of decor and people.  We were seated immediately and since it was 2:30pm, the place wasn’t packed.  First thing – the service was AWFUL. Not a single waiter or server came by for 30 minutes to take our order. I mean there were waiters going back and forth but not a single one stopped. We felt ignored.  We would have gotten up and left if we weren’t so hungry.  When we finally put our orders in (incidentally taken by the manager who we also had to stop) and got our appetizers, it took another 20 minutes for someone to even bother clearing the dirty dishes away. UGH. I hate terrible service. Our waiter really sucked.

Cookie Monster got the beet and avocado salad in a light vinaigrette dressing:

This was simple but good. The beets were slightly sweet and contrasted beautifully with the creamy avocado.

I got the artichoke in some kind of watered down butter sauce:

This was gross.  The artichokes were bland and tasted overly boiled. The sauce (if it was even meant to be sauce) tasted disgusting and imparted nothing to this dish. Maybe the artichoke was poached in butter water or something and some of the cooking water transferred over to the serving plate. The whole thing tasted like over boiled vegetable: no flavor and somewhat mushy.

For main course Cookie Monster got the omelet with cheese and caramelized onions while I opted for the gruyere cheese, bacon and egg sandwich:

MMMMM the bread made the sandwich. Doesn’t good bread just elevate any sandwich to “mmmmmm” levels? This bread was light and airy but crispy at the same time. The gruyere cheese was just melting all over the place with its wonderful nuttiness and the bacon was thick cut and smokey.

Close up:

I loved my sandwich but I also noted other tables with different kinds of sandwiches I probably would have picked over my bacon, egg and cheese. One table had a meatball sandwich, another was eating what looked like arugula and proscuitto……come to find out – they failed to give us the sandwich menu. BOOOOOOO.

So final thoughts: food is great like all the other Frankies but the service was awful. Maybe we just got a sucky server but that’s one way to ruin an otherwise great meal eh? If you decide to stop in, definitely try one of their sandwich varieties – it’s that good.  They use that same bread that is like a lighter version of pizza dough for all their sandwiches.

Frankies 570, 570 Hudson Street, New York, NY