Best Gnocchi Greenwich Village: How to Judge a Great Plate

Searching for the best gnocchi Greenwich Village has to offer usually turns up a list of restaurant names with a single line next to each. That tells you where to go, but not what to look for when the bowl arrives. This guide takes the other route. It explains what separates soft, light gnocchi from a heavy, gummy plate, gives you a simple checklist to judge any version you try, and then uses the two handmade gnocchi at Da Andrea, 35 W 13th St between 5th and 6th Avenues, as a worked example.

Da Andrea is a family-run Northern Italian ristorante that makes its fresh pasta by hand in-house every day. It started in the early ’90s as a narrow storefront on Hudson Street serving Bolognese pastas and has been a Village favorite for more than two decades. Today the Greenwich Village dining room sits a short walk from Union Square, Washington Square Park and the NYU campus, and it is still the kind of intimate room regulars treat as their own.

We won’t tell you we have the best gnocchi in the city. That is your call to make. What we can do is show you how we think about the dish, so the next time you order gnocchi anywhere in the Village you know exactly what you are tasting.

Key Takeaways

• Gnocchi are small potato dumplings made from potato and flour. “Gnocchetti” simply means little gnocchi, and great ones are soft and light, never gummy.
• Judge a plate on texture, lightness, freshness and sauce balance. The checklist below shows what to look for and why it matters.
• Da Andrea Greenwich Village serves two handmade versions: Gnocchetti di Patate with gorgonzola sauce and arugula at dinner, and Gnocchetti al Pomodoro with tomato basil sauce at weekend brunch.
• No meat is listed in either gnocchi dish, which makes them an easy choice for vegetarian guests.

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What Are Gnocchi, Exactly?

Gnocchi are one of the oldest and simplest pastas in the Italian kitchen. Instead of a rolled sheet of egg dough, they start with cooked potato. The potato is mashed or riced while still warm, mixed with just enough flour to hold it together, rolled into ropes and cut into small pillows. Many cooks then roll each piece over the tines of a fork or a ridged board, which leaves little grooves on one side and a small dimple on the other.

Those grooves are not decoration. They give the sauce something to grab, so every bite carries a little of the cream or tomato with it. The dimple helps the dumpling cook evenly, so the center turns tender at the same time as the outside.

The word “gnocchetti” is the diminutive, meaning little gnocchi. Smaller dumplings cook quickly, feel lighter on the fork and spread the sauce across more surface area. That is why you will often see gnocchetti paired with rich sauces like gorgonzola: the small size keeps a creamy dish from feeling heavy.

With so short an ingredient list, there is nowhere for mistakes to hide. Too much flour makes them dense; too much handling makes them gluey. Made carefully, they are soft enough to cut with the side of a fork.

What the Best Gnocchi Have in Common: A Checklist

Every kitchen makes gnocchi a little differently, but the good ones share a few qualities. Use this table as a guide the next time a bowl lands in front of you, in the Village or anywhere else.

Quality	What to look for	Why it matters
Texture	Soft and pillowy, yielding easily to a fork	A gummy or rubbery bite usually means too much flour or overworked dough
Lightness	Each piece feels airy, not heavy in the stomach	Light gnocchi let you enjoy a rich sauce without feeling weighed down
Freshness	Made by hand, ideally the same day	Fresh dough keeps the delicate potato flavor and tender bite
Shape and ridges	Even size, small grooves or a dimple	Ridges hold sauce, and an even size means every piece cooks the same
Sauce balance	Enough sauce to coat, not drown	The dumplings should still taste of potato, with the sauce as a partner
Contrast	Something fresh, sharp or peppery on the plate	A bright element cuts richness and keeps each bite interesting

Take one piece on its own before you dive in. Does it hold its shape but give way when you press it? Is the sauce clinging to the ridges or pooling in the bowl? If both answers are yes, you are eating good gnocchi.

Where to Find the Best Gnocchi Greenwich Village Regulars Order

At Da Andrea, gnocchi follow the same rule as every other pasta in the house: they are handmade in-house daily. That matters more for gnocchi than almost any other shape, because potato dough is at its lightest and most tender when it is fresh.

Here is how the two Greenwich Village versions compare.

	Gnocchetti di Patate	Gnocchetti al Pomodoro
When it is served	Dinner menu	Weekend brunch, Saturdays and Sundays
What the menu says	Potato gnocchi, gorgonzola sauce, arugula	Handmade potato gnocchi, classic tomato basil sauce
Character	Rich, creamy blue-cheese sauce cut by peppery arugula	Bright, simple and familiar
Good for	A cozy, cool-weather dinner	A relaxed late-morning plate after a park walk
Meat listed in the dish	None	None

Gnocchetti di Patate (Dinner)

The dinner version is the one to try if you like comfort food with a bit of edge. Little potato gnocchi are tossed in a gorgonzola sauce, a creamy blue-cheese sauce with a gentle tang, and finished with arugula. The arugula is the clever part. Its peppery, slightly bitter leaves cut through the richness of the cheese, so the dish stays lively from the first forkful to the last.

Measured against the checklist, this plate leans on two qualities in particular: lightness, because small gnocchetti carry a rich sauce without feeling heavy, and contrast, because the greens balance the cream. You can see it alongside the rest of the primi on the Greenwich Village menu.

Gnocchetti al Pomodoro (Weekend Brunch)

On Saturdays and Sundays, the brunch menu brings a second version: handmade potato gnocchi in a classic tomato basil sauce. It is the most straightforward way to taste gnocchi, because a simple tomato sauce lets the texture of the dumplings do the talking. If you want to test a kitchen’s gnocchi against the checklist, this is the plate to do it with.

It also makes a nice change from Benedict Parma or Uova al Forno, and a reminder that this is, first of all, a pasta restaurant.

Building a Gnocchi Dinner Around Your Evening

Gnocchi work well as the center of a meal or as a shared middle course in the Italian style, before the mains. Here is how to build around them depending on the occasion.

Occasion	Before the gnocchi	Alongside or after	To finish
Weeknight dinner after a Union Square walk	Insalata di Cesare with polenta croutons	Gnocchetti di Patate as your main	Affogato
NYU parents’ weekend dinner	Tigelle Modenesi con Prosciutto to share	Gnocchetti di Patate for the table, then Galletto Arrosto	Tiramisu
Meat-free dinner	Burrata con Basilico or Barbabietole	Gnocchetti di Patate, then Tortino di Melanzane	Panna Cotta
Seafood-leaning evening	Calamaretti alla Griglia	Gnocchetti di Patate to share, then Filetto di Salmone	Sorbetto
Weekend brunch	Insalata di Pera or Crostini di Avocado	Gnocchetti al Pomodoro	French Toast to share

The Tigelle Modenesi con Prosciutto, warm Modenese flatbread buns with Parma prosciutto, were featured in the New York Times “$25 and Under” column. The Calamaretti alla Griglia, grilled squid with a corn and cucumber salad and lemon dressing, is a Greenwich Village starter whose brightness sets up a creamy gnocchi dish nicely.

Pairing and Sides for a Creamy or Tomato Gnocchi

Contorni worth adding

If you order the gnocchi as a main, one vegetable side on the table rounds things out. At dinner, the Greenwich Village contorni include spinach with garlic and oil, sautéed broccoli rabe, roasted potatoes and butternut squash. With a gorgonzola sauce, the broccoli rabe is a natural partner, since its pleasant bitterness does the same job as the arugula. Spinach with garlic and oil is a gentler option. We would skip the roasted potatoes with gnocchi, simply because you are already eating potato.

Wine with gnocchi

Da Andrea keeps a curated list of Italian wines, and the simplest approach is to tell your server what you are ordering and how you like to drink. As a general guide, a crisp white with good acidity is a classic match for a creamy blue-cheese sauce, because the freshness cleans the palate between bites. A medium-bodied red works well with the tomato basil gnocchi at brunch, or with a meal that continues on to a secondo.

Gnocchi for vegetarian guests

No meat is listed in either the Gnocchetti di Patate or the Gnocchetti al Pomodoro, so both work as a meat-free pasta. The wider menu has several pasta and vegetable dishes without meat, including Pennette con Melanzane, Fettuccine alla Mediterranea and the Tortino di Melanzane. If you have a specific dietary need, ask your server about any dish before ordering.

A Village Gnocchi Night: From Union Square to West 13th Street

There is something very Greenwich Village about ending a walk with a warm bowl of gnocchi. Da Andrea’s dining room is on West 13th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, which puts it a few minutes from Union Square Park and a short stroll north of Washington Square Park. Wander through the square, browse the streets around the park, head up Fifth Avenue, and you arrive hungry and ready for something comforting.

That geography shapes the room. On a fall weeknight you will find neighbors who have been ordering the same pasta for years, NYU faculty finishing a long day, and parents taking a student out for a proper dinner during a campus visit. A plate of gnocchetti in gorgonzola sauce is exactly the kind of dish that suits those evenings: familiar enough for a nervous freshman’s parents, interesting enough for the regular who has worked through the whole primi list.

The roots run deep, too. Da Andrea began on Hudson Street in the early ’90s, serving Bolognese pastas to a West Village crowd, and it carried that pasta-first habit with it to West 13th Street. More than two decades later, the Greenwich Village room is still intimate and authentic, a neighborhood restaurant before anything else. Our older guides to homemade pasta in Greenwich and fresh pasta in Greenwich tell more of that story.

A few ideas for planning your own gnocchi night in the Village:

• Before dinner: loop through Washington Square Park, under the arch, then walk north toward 13th Street.
• Weekend version: come for brunch on Saturday or Sunday, order the Gnocchetti al Pomodoro, and spend the rest of the day around Union Square.
• With visiting family: pair a campus tour with a sit-down Italian dinner a short walk away.
• Directions: see the Greenwich Village location page for the map and address details.

Conclusion

The best gnocchi share a few simple traits: a soft, light texture, fresh handmade dough, ridges that hold the sauce and something bright on the plate to balance the richness. Once you know what to look for, you can judge any bowl in the city for yourself.

At Da Andrea Greenwich Village, you can put that checklist to work twice: the Gnocchetti di Patate with gorgonzola and arugula at dinner, and the Gnocchetti al Pomodoro with tomato basil sauce at weekend brunch. Both are handmade in-house, in a dining room that has been feeding Village regulars since its Hudson Street days. Find directions on our Greenwich Village location page, browse the full Greenwich Village menu, or reserve your table and come taste them on West 13th Street.

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