The Pint Sized Palate — A Kid’s Take on New York Food

Tuscan Dream Corner Cafe

By Churchill Stone

Sogno Toscano, 17 Perry Street

Sogno Toscano is a beautiful place on the corner of Perry and Waverly next to Seventh Avenue. It has great big windows and lots of sunlight. You can see a turquoise scooter in the window.

Sogno Toscano (which means Tuscan Dream) recently had its fourth anniversary. It’s my family’s favorite place in the West Village. It started as a cafe and a market for things from Tuscany. We get olive oil, cheeses, and prosciutto there. I always want to buy buffalo mozzarella too. We are friends of one of the owners — he has long red hair, dresses well, and usually drives up on a cool-looking motorcycle. His name is Brian and his mother is Irish, but trust me, he is very Italian.

My sister and I like to go to Sogno Toscano in the morning on weekends because they have bombolone (Italian donuts) and cornetti (croissants). We go to the counter at the back where all the pastries are in glass displays and try to decide which ones we want. But you have to come fairly early if you want to get a chocolate bombolone. Sometimes I have a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich on a cornetto which is my favorite savory breakfast. If you want straachino (soft) or pecorino (hard) cheese, you can get that too.

My parents usually have cappuccinos, but “ST” has other coffee drinks and Aperol spritzes and wines. Also, all the people who work there are super nice. We like it so much that my sister had her fourth birthday there.

If you’re a kid, it’s best to go for breakfast or lunch because at dinner it’s mostly young adults going on dates. However, I recently went there for dinner. To start, we got the prosciutto and burrata for our appetizer — it was very tasty because burrata is a lot like buffalo mozzarella. (The funny thing is that it was almost exactly the same as the sandwich I had for breakfast at Sogno Toscano that morning!) I ordered the Galvanina lemonade too — though it’s bottled, it tastes really good. On the menu, it said that our pasta was made fresh in Salerno from 100% semolina wheat flown in from Italy every week. Because Sogno Toscano is also a big food company (maybe you’ve seen their trucks) they can do that.

The Bolognese was excellent. It was a long pasta, bucatini I think. There was a lot of meat in it which made up for there being no meatballs.

The waiter, Andrea, said we should try the pesto pasta. I wanted to be polite, but I did not want green pasta. My father ordered it anyway and I knew he was hoping I’d try it. This was my first time trying pesto, and even though it’s green, and the sauce looks like a green vegetable smoothie, kids should try it more often! It was so good. Now, pesto is one of my favorite pastas.

For dessert, we got the “Sogno Toscano” which is pistachio lava cake. And even though it was green too and had nuts on the bottom, I liked it which surprised me. But sometimes my sister and I wish ST had gelato.

Either way, Happy Anniversary Sogno Toscano, here is to four more years!