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Vice Versa Restaurant
Rating Details »
Neighborhoods: Theater District, Hell's Kitchen
325 W 51st St Frnt
New York, NY 10019
(212) 399-9265
325 W 51st St Frnt
New York, NY 10019
(212) 399-9265
- Nearest Transit:
-
50th St-8th Ave (C, E)
50th St-Broadway (1)
7th Ave-53rd St (B, D, E)
- Attire:
- Dressy
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Price Range:
-
$$$
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- No
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- No
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- Yes
- Good for:
- Dinner
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
Sponsored Result
Special Offer Nearby
Bricco Restaurant
- Category:
- Italian
- Neighborhood:
- Theater District
Mention Yelp and receive a free Limoncello (after dinner drink).
19 reviews for Vice Versa Restaurant
The cube bread pieces won me over! They tasted great.
Great food, atmosphere and service. Great for dates, friends, etc.
The food was amazing.
Great atmosphere and service. Friendly setting and great location.
This is a definite must do at least once. You won't be disappointed.
Went here on a business lunch and not ashamed to give it a solid 4-stars. The food was really good. We splurged a bit and had three courses (antipasti, pastas, mains), and they did not disappoint.
The pastas were the high point of the meal. They were all excellent. My favorite was the raviolli, and there was also a carbonara-ish dish which I can't remember the name for. They were both very rich. Yum-o.
For my main, I had the grilled dorade. It was nicely prepared. Not amazing, but very good, well-cooked The waiter was very attentive, although for a business lunch (we were on a tight schedule) they didn't move as fast as we wanted.
This would be a nice place for a pre-theatre dinner should you want to escape the tourists. Prices didn't seem too bad; however, if I were to come here on my own, I'd probably just order a plate of pasta.
Also, yall should note that this is along the row gay bars/clubs restaurants. So, if you want to hit up a gay bar after they are right next door ;)
Business travel usually makes you want to curl into a ball and cry because it's so glamorous. Occasionally, you'll find a restaurant that eases the pain of going back to a hotel room and watching late night informercials.
This place was just plain good. The service was outstanding, and the food was stellar. I ordered the spaghetti with crab and olives, and wasn't disappointed. I highly recommend this place, even if you're not sleeping in a bed previously occupied by a stranger.
Looks a lot stuffier than it turned out to be.
Waiter was great! Excellent service, very friendly and attentive.
The pastas were all delicious.
Nice setting, good crowd and the servers were very friendly and helpful. I had the sesame crusted samon which came with spinach and horseradish sour cream and mashed potatoes. The entree was simply delicious. Good wine selection as well. The outdoor patio would have been cute on a less humid night. I find this to be a gem in the area.
Great decor, good selection on the menu. It took me a while to look for what I wanted. I picked the salmon dish which was just great. I tried a bite of the halibut and that was superb.
We had some antipasti as well, which was really good for starters.
We closed the meal with a Lemoncello.
I went here one night for dinner with friends. The food was good, but the portions could have been a little bigger. My one complaint was my waiter. He seemed to be more interested in flirting with the old men at the table next to us than serving us... his customers. What I found to be particularly ballsy of him was that when my friend checked his bank statement the next day he found that his bill was higher then it should have been (We gave a cash tip, but our waiter decided to give himself something extra on my friends behalf). What saves the restaurant from getting one star is the fact that the manager fired the waiter and reimbursed my friend.
Also they have nice decor... yea I'm a typical gay.
We had an 8 PM musical to catch and walked in at 6:30 PM, afraid that we would not have enough time to eat. The waiter was really cool and assured us that we did not have to rush. The food came out pretty quickly and we were done eating by about 7:20 PM. I was impressed.
I tried their seafood ravioli with creamy pesto sauce and fresh tomato and my husband had the strangled priest pasta with duck ragout and black gaeta olives (I'll attach pictures). We both really enjoyed our food. Their bread (the small cubed ones) was very tasty and the service was really good.
Went here for dinner last week before the Radio City Speaker Series (NERD ALERT). For the area, and particularly for pre-theatre, it's good. Not great, but good.
We showed up at 5:30 and were the only non-employees in the restaurant. Others started to filter in around 6 and when we left around 7:30 the place was decently full. The decor was very nice and in nicer weather the enclosed outdoor area in the back would be a great place to sit.
I had the calamari and artichoke tart (good) and the squid ink tagliolini with bay scallops and sea urchin (also good). My friend had the lobster salad (was hoping for more lobster for the price) and the strip steak (ok). It's not really a steak place at all, which should have been obvious by the menu, but if you're going to have it, make it well.
Price wise, it' s kind of a mixed bag. For me appetizers and desserts were a little high, but the entrees were very reasonably priced, particularly the pasta dishes. The wait staff was attentive and answered any questions we had quickly.
I feel like I might be a little harsh only giving Vice Versa three starts considering I don't really have anything bad to say about it, but I guess I don't have anything particularly great to say about it either. If you're looking for a good, well priced pasta dinner before going to see a show (or in my case, see a middle aged man make an ass of himself by standing up in the middle of Radio City and yelling at Tucker Carlson), Vice Versa is one of the better restaurants in the area.
With ultra modern decor and a nice space, Vice Versa boast very friendly service and good food. My husband and I have been there twice, we always sit at the bar (even when offered a table). The bartender is always very nice and the food is good. We had the tortino di carciofi e calamari (calamari tart and artichokes) to start, which had a good balance of crispiness, richness and freshness (with the salad). That was very good.
We also ordered the seafood ravioli and the pasta with duck ragout which was also very good.
We ended the meal with the complimentary sweet treats: a plate of assorted cookies. All very yummy.
This is a great restaurant, with a great atmosphere and mostly great value: at 15-20 bucks a plate in the Theater District.
Modern decor, decent pasta, excellent dessert
I went here yesterday for my friend's b-day dinner. She didn't want to go to a Japanese, French, or Chinese since she went there for previous b-days, so I picked this place with recommendations from Yelpers.
The restaurant is nice and spacious, they sat us near the back, by the outside patio (which was closed off due to cold weather) where they put up their Christmas tree. The design was modern yet a bit "zen like", as my friends described it, with interesting designs on their wall.
As for the food, I had the Strangled Priest pasta w/ the duck ragout. It was pretty good, although I can't rave about it as others have. The duck ragout was delicious, but the pasta was a bit bland. I did try the veal ravioli w/ the amaretto cookies and raisins. That was really delicious. I should have order that dish instead. Although I liked the food a lot, beware that this is not family style Italian food so the portion is not what you would expect. 2 of my friends had to order 2 entrees because most of us didn't order an appetizer.
As for dessert, I think they updated their menu but failed to do so on their website. I ordered a walnut (or some kind of nut) and cream with brandy sauce. It was really good!!! The brandy sauce was mixed with peach and was dressed around the cream. The sauce is a bit bitter, but when you mix it with the cream, you taste the tangy flavor of the peach and it was really delicious. I will definitely come here again, if I ever get a chance to go to a same restaurant twice now that I'm so busy trying new restaurants.
Consistent. Good quality. Casual, smart atmosphere. Reasonable prices.
The veal, raisin and amaretto cookie-stuffed ravioli entree with sage and pancetta sauce is amazing. You cannot go wrong with this dish and you HAVE to try it if it's your first time here.
The vitello tonnato appetizer is basically a cold dish. Paper-thin slices of veal (taste like cold meat) drenched in a thin (but not watery), smooth mayonnaise that's been flavored with tuna. Sound weird but this is a traditional Italian specialty that tastes good. The dish is garnished with half a cherry tomato, a sprig of salad and some caper berries. I've never had caper berries before and they are YUM. Definitely sour as they're pickled but the berry texture goes so well with the sauce and the veal.
The risotto with sausage and parmesan (entree special) had good flavor but didn't have much texture to it...not much sausage....wasn't that satisfying.
Lobster salad is okay, a bit on the sour side but has lots of juicy, sweet lobster to make up for it.
Service is pretty good. The bread basket usually has a variety of warm foccacia and rolls. It looks like there's a small area for garden seating inside the restaurant. Decor is modern but very comfortable and intimate.
Overall, it's a good restaurant that I'd go to anytime for a casual but still elegant dinner with friends or with clients. The ravioli is a must-try.
What is with 51st Street between 8th and 9th Avenues? There are like 50 freakin' restaurants on that street! I'm not sure why this particular block landed up with so many restaurants but it's my goal to try every damn one. It's also my goal to lose 50 pounds but that's highly doubtful, especially if I try every restaurant on 51st between 8th and 9th. It is circular but since I have almost no hope of losing five pounds - let alone 50 - I am going to stick to trying all the restaurants as my goal.
So today I went to Vice Versa, which is my 2nd restaurant on the block (previously, I went to Braai). I liked the place and recommend it. The menu have several interesting pasta dishes that look good. I made the mistake of trying the braised beef with broccoli. It wasn't bad but I probably should have tried a pasta dish for this review to be worthwhile since pasta is such a big part of Vice Versa's menu. As a starter, I had a bowl of pasta fagioli. That was good some eatin'. I would recommend Vice Versa on the basis of the pasta fagioli alone. I liked the space. It is surprisingly spacious given that, like most of the other restaurants on the block, it is in the basement of a brownstone. Nothing particular struck me about the design but yet it was soothing and comfortable.
Given all this, why am I only giving it three stars? Perhaps it's because I tend to be a good grader when it comes to restaurants and this time around I want to give a grade less than four stars so you don't think I am a culinary pushover. But the problem is that I like food and I am not picky. Unless a restaurant served me a crap sandwich (I mean that literally - imagine the waiter bringing me an actual piece of dog poop between two slices of bread with mustard), I will eat the food like the happy moron that I am. I think it's because my mother was such a horrible cook and no matter what I eat now, I'm just happy it's not the slop my mother used to force on me. Perhaps if my mother was a better cook, I would like her more. On the whole, there is not much to like about her. If she was a restaurant and I was reviewing her on yelp, I would only give her one star and the review would be scathing. I could have been something if it wasn't for that evil witch/crappy cook! So Vice Versa is getting three stars because of the way I was raised. If the owners of Vice Versa think it is unfair, they should speak to my mother and/or much sure they are raising their own kids well. Despite the three stars, I recommend you try Vice Versa and definitely order the pasta fagioli.
Ehhhh. Not that good. I thought it would be a fun place to go, but kind of stuffy. I just really wasn't all that impressed. With so many choices in NYC, why go here?
Five Stars for the strangled priest pasta with duck ragout.
I think the reason I did not love my dining experience at Vice Versa is because I expected too much from it. It is smart looking, set down from the sidewalk, with its clean lines and neutrals. The menu just didn't excite me and the wine list is not good for the markup. My food was good, but not very thrilling.
this is a fairly average italian restaurant, though i gave it an extra star for being a stylish restaurant in the midst of shabby hell's kitchen.
food - average
atmosphere - stylish, clean, busy but not overcrowded -- good for power lunching
The service is uneven, though the space is stylish. Off a side-street in Hells Kitchen, this is a quiet little eatery that serves upscale Italian. Most dishes are good, but the signature dish that is a must-try is the "Casoncelli alla Bernamasca" which are a ravioli-like pasta filled with veal, cookies and raisins in a brown-butter sage sauce. It may sound odd, but it is AMAZING!
