If, as they say, restauranting is all about “location, location, location,” then Bacaro has three things going for it. An original tenant in the attractive Shonkwiler Building on West Pearl, Bacaro has become a fixture in the city’s hip west end on the strength of its unavoidable front patio and it’s spacious, photogenically well-appointed Northern Italian interior.
A magnet for passing stomachs and first-daters aspiring to a touch of class, the style here is the story – evocative Venetian trimmings and brassy metalwork downstairs, slightly upscale happy hour martini-chuggers and facetime fiends up. The rooftop patio, featuring a makeshift bar presided over by makeshift tenders, is an unforgiving brick cube with negligible views that conjures doleful visions of hurried cigarette breaks down at the factory.
Bacaro serves food, some of it pleasantly aromatic and even adventurous (carpaccio, osso bucco), but overall the fare aspires to heights it does not attain at prices it does not merit, and for that it continually fails to strum the heartstrings of discriminating diners disinclined to sacrifice the victual for the visual. An interesting diversion every, say, six months or so, given its centrality, its pretensions, and its promise, Bacaro could, and should, deliver far more.
