Last night’s birthday dinner at the highly touted Fiorella Pasta Bar was a bit of a disappointment, unfortunately. The place itself is tiny, with an open kitchen, a few seats at the counter, and a couple of 2-tops squeezed along the only path the servers use to bring out plates of steaming pasta.
There’s a lot more outdoor seating, but I will never understand what would compel anyone to sit in smelling distance of a street drain, as that would ruin my dining experience entirely 
We had a short wait outside, and were given a menu to order our aperitivi — a delightfully tart & refreshing Just Peachy for me (peach, lemon, amaro, vermouth, prosecco), and a Carbon Copy pilsner for my PIC.

Our table was along the serving path near the kitchen, where we had a good view of the action & the various paste and antipasti being carried past us.
We shared the corn flan with lobster, butter, and Thai chili, and my PIC got an order of the focaccia.

The flan was really nice & went well with the lobster, but any chili was indiscernible.

The focaccia was cold and drenched in olive oil. Meh.
As for our pasta mains — both the rigatoni and the tonnarelli portions being carried past us looked intimidatingly large, and we wanted to try something more… exotic?
My PIC got the maltagliati (which not one person working knew how to pronounce, btw
) with rabbit, asiago d’allevo, and fried sage.

The rabbit was mild, akin to shredded chicken, the pasta portion rather small. Overall, pretty uninteresting.
I had the stuffed fazzoletti with corn, chanterelle, and huitlacoche. I’d not had huitlacoche before and was excited.
There were three tiny envelopes of pasta with maybe 4 chanterelles strewn atop. It was also rather boring.
While I’m not sure I would’ve wanted what looked to be a pound of rigatoni, or 1/2 a pound of tonnarelli (which everyone else seemed to order), we kinda felt like we might’ve missed the boat by ordering what we did. At least we weren’t overly stuffed — but at those prices one might expect a little more food, and DEF more of a wow factor. It’s a Vetri place, after all.
The Malvasia rosé we’d chosen with our dinner was out, so they gave us two others to choose from & generously offered a $75 bottle we liked for $65 — a gorgeous, lightly sparkling rosé whose name unfortunately escapes me now.
Dessert was an amaro for me, and grappa for my PIC.
I’d indicated the occasion for our meal when I made the reservation, and this is what was placed in front of me, along with our check:
It’s highly unlikely we’ll return, and I can’t really recommend the place, either 
Bummer, man. Here’s to the next, better meal — and make it BYOB!!
!