Parm NYC – A Secret Meal At Their Upper West Location

When a foodie sees the little slightly curved rigatoni, their immediate thought is always one thing: Carbone. When I first saw these beautiful noodles on the ‘gram I thought they were Carbone too. Nevertheless, I clicked the pic and to my surprise they were not Carbone at all, they were Parm.

I had seen Parm on my feed several times for their (obvious) variety of parm heros as well as their baked ziti and their mozzarella sticks, but I had never seen this rigatoni. I investigated further and discovered that they only serve their spicy rigatoni at their Upper West Side location. My foodie friend and I were eager to go, we had loosely discussed it that night and when I woke up I had an Open Table email saying that my reservation was booked. Only a true friend books you reservations while you sleep.

When we finally made it all the way to 72^nd street we were surprised by the atmosphere. I felt like I was in a 70s diner, with the waiters wearing Parm hats on their heads and different tunes playing throughout the restaurant.

The two dishes we decided upon were the spicy rigatoni and the eggplant parm hero. Honestly, both of them were two of the best of their type that I’ve had in a while. I say a lot of things are “the best” but I’d be willing to trek back up there for this spicy dish. The eggplant parm was perfect. Eggplant parm or EPP if you will, is very hit or miss when ordering out. Not all places cook the eggplant right so it ends up being too dry or too soggy and hard to eat. This was not the case at Parm, it was cooked and breaded well and then parm-ed to perfection. The hero roll it was served on was a nice quality bread as well and without hesitation we dipped our leftovers in the spicy rigatoni sauce.

This was also one of the least expensive meals I’ve had in New York City in a while. With nice sized portions our bill ended up being about $30 all together! I had a great time and my friend had a great time as well to say the least. I have received more than one text from her asking if I was “thinking about Parm.” If you weren’t thinking about Parm before, you should be now!