Soda Club

Dough sets the grammar

Flour meets water before the room fills. Pedro Allende, Executive Chef at Soda Club in East Village, New York City, builds the restaurant’s plant-based Italian cooking from that first touch: mixing, rolling, shaping, fermenting, then leaving enough space for the dough to read clearly. His station is not described through a long public apprenticeship or a named predecessor. What the house makes plain is the method, and the method sits in the hands.

At Soda Club, Allende treats pasta and bread as the structure of the meal, not as a vehicle for sauce. A sheet of pasta, a folded ravioli, and the base for Roman-style pinsa each ask for a different kind of attention. The cooking stays modern, but its discipline is older than the address: proportion, chew, filling, edge, and balance. Comfort arrives through texture rather than weight. The menu’s plant-based register depends on restraint, because almond ricotta, confit tomato, broccoli rabe, capers, celery root, chanterelles, smoked mushrooms, and nduja-style heat need clean borders if the pasta is to remain the center.

Pasta shaped before the pass

The kitchen’s signature work begins with house-made pastas, fresh-baked bread, and a rare Roman-style pinsa built from long-fermented dough and rice flour. That pinsa asks a different patience from a filled pasta: fermentation for structure, heat for a crisp edge, enough interior chew to hold toppings without turning heavy. Smoked mushrooms and fried artichokes sit on one expression of that base; figs, nduja, and pistachios on another. The base carries as much of the craft as the topping.

Filled pasta gives the bench another test. Ravioli with plant-based ricotta, chanterelles, and confit tomato depends on clean enclosure and the pressure of the fold. Tagliatelle in lemon nori butter with broccoli rabe, capers, and celery root works through brightness, savor, bitterness, and earthiness held in line. Gigli, bigoli, arancini, and date cake have become part of the restaurant’s known vocabulary, but the through-line is not abundance. It is the way Allende lets structure decide flavor.

Natural wine against dark jade walls

The room keeps close to the work. Dark jade walls, velvet chairs, vintage pendant lights, and low light make the East Village address feel held rather than staged. Plates move through a conversational room, from the pass to tables set for small plates, pasta, pinsa, and the longer pasta progression. The counterpoint is the wine program: more than 200 natural and organic wines from small producers, chosen in the same low-intervention spirit that shapes the doughs.

Soda Club has held Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition for 3 years, tied here to house-made pasta, vegan ravioli, and the value of the cooking at this address. Awards sit outside the station. Inside, the measure remains simpler: whether the folded edge stays sealed, whether the pinsa keeps its crunch, whether the final spoonful of date cake still belongs to Soda Club.