I’m headed to Porto in November! Where should I go? What should I eat?
This seaside town in northern Portugal has captivated me ever since I saw Anthony Bourdain walking down its narrow streets in Parts Unknown.
When you see Anthony digging into a cheesy pork sandwich called a francesinha in a little cafe, who doesn’t want to be there?
I’ll be staying for 11 days in the center of town. If you’re a dedicated reader of Tremendous, you know I love to eat!
Where should I go?
Where I’m planning to eat:
A Perola do Bolhao — a grocery store out of a time machine, known for fine olives and cheeses.
O Alfonso — where Bourdain had his mouthwatering francesinha.
Chocolateria Flores and Chocolateria Equador — known for Porto’s best sweets
Pingo Doce — charming grocery store found all over Portugal. I want their pasteis de nata!
The Dog — cachorros, the cheesy hotdogs Anthony is eating later in the episode. Sliced into small bites, they make the perfect snack.
Murca no Porto — very traditional Portuguese foods like tripe at an excellent price. Delightful, homey setting.
Combi Coffee — beautiful espresso, lattes and pastries.
And yes, I plan to do things other than eat!
Sights on my list:
Igrejo do Carmo — Perhaps Porto’s most spectacular church, replete with traditional blue and white paintings called azulejos. Azulejos are very typical of Porto.
Igreja de Sao Francisco — contains 100 kg of gold leaf!
Foz do Douro — lovely old fort along the sea.
Livraria Lello — bookshop known for ornate woodwork. May have been the inspiration for Harry Potter.
Jardim Botanico do Porto — free botanical garden! How often do you see that?
Parque da Cidade — the biggest park in town, with easy access to the ocean.
I’m excited to add a lot more to my list! This will be my first trip outside the US in two years, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Please leave a comment with your favorite spots — I might even write them up on the blog!
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P.S. I found another, very early Anthony Bourdain episode on Porto. It’s from A Cook’s Tour, his first TV series. Enjoy!
Demo Day came again last week at Y Combinator, and prices were predictably high. But consider the work that goes into Demo Day…
The Long Road to Demo Day
Over 20,000 companies applied for YC’s Winter 2023 batch. 282 were selected, a little over 1%.
That means that YC staff had to read and discard 19,700 applications. If each one takes even 10 minutes, that’s 3,283 hours of work — more than a year’s worth.
After finding the best of the best, YC intensively coached these startups for 3 months. The coaches are some of the best founders and investors on the planet.
And you expect to get this for $8 million pre-money? Get real.
YC Deals vs. The Rest
We can’t compare a YC deal to the average startup raising money.
YC has the best track record in the business. Airbnb, Stripe, and Coinbase all came from YC — not the random dealflow in your inbox.
What’s more, the average startup hasn’t been vetted and coached by the best people in tech. Nor does it have $500,000 of guaranteed YC cash behind it.
I’ve had the good fortune to back several awesome YC companies in recent years — Caribou, TANGObuilder, and Hellometer.
The founders are scrappy and astute. Clearly, they learned a lot at YC.
But These Companies Have Zero Traction!
It’s true that most startups at Demo Day have little to no traction.
I don’t invest without revenue. So, I’ve never invested in a YC company at Demo Day.
Instead, I like to meet them about 1-3 years later.
These are no longer fledgling companies. They have significant revenue and a growing list of customers.
Best of all, they’re usually raising at the same price as they were on Demo Day!
That’s the flip side of high Demo Day valuations: it’s hard to go higher any time soon. Investors like me can just wait for the startups to grow, investing later in a de-risked company at the same price.
Looking Beyond YC
YC isn’t the only source of pre-vetted, high quality deals.
The LAUNCH Accelerator cranks out awesome startups with real traction at reasonable prices. I’ve done more deals there than anywhere else.
I also like the Entrepreneur’s Roundtable Accelerator in NYC and Techstars.
Or — gasp! — you can do the work of finding companies yourself! You’ll probably pay less, but you know what they say — you get what you pay for.
Wrap-Up
All of us in startupland should be grateful to YC. No one else funds and coaches so many awesome entrepreneurs, every year.
Whether you invest at Demo Day, a year later, or not at all, we’re better off with YC than without.
Congrats to the Winter 2023 batch — see you next summer!
What do you think of YC valuations? Leave a comment and let us know!
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“I’ll have the burger.” “Burger.” “Burger, medium rare.”
Moran’s in Hoboken, NJ is a homey Irish pub that serves the finest burger in town. We sat down at the spacious sidewalk cafe on a recent Friday, filled with anticipation.
The setting couldn’t be prettier. Moran’s sits alongside leafy Church Square Park in a charming residential neighborhood.
My friends and I perused the menus, but we all knew what we were going to order. Still, you have to look at the menu, right?
The Moran’s Burger is an 8 oz Pat La Frieda. Pat La Frieda, a butcher in nearby North Bergen, produces an unctuous patty from a blend of different cuts.
If you’re used to just ground chuck, you’ll never go back.
On top of this singular patty goes rashers, a delicious Irish bacon. Add Irish cheddar, a savory housemade ketchup, truffle mayo, fried onions and arugula and you’ve got one heck of a burger.
At so many restaurants, the bun is an afterthought. Not at Moran’s.
Their sesame seed brioche is so good I’d eat it on its own with butter. Matter of fact, maybe I should find out where these come from…
We attempted a little desultory chatter, all the while glancing at the kitchen. I need that burger…
Out they came! As the waiter laid the towering sandwich in front of me, I couldn’t have been more excited.
“I’m digging in!”
The first bite is always special. The beefy juices oozed out, dribbling down my chin.
Good, they remembered the mayo. I dunked a fry in — this is one thing the French got right.
Alternate forms of bacon usually don’t do it for me, but the Irish came through here. Rashers are a great addition — fatty and satisfying.
Conversation dropped off as we sailed into our burgers. When the table goes silent, you know the food is first-rate.
In addition to being scrumptious, the Moran’s burger is huge. I was stuffed as I took the last bite.
Moran’s is everything a neighborhood pub should be — friendly and comfortable with amazing food. Stop in for delicious burgers, fish and chips, and more!
What’s your favorite burger? Leave a comment and let us know!
Have a great weekend, everyone!
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“He was a nobody.” Peter Thiel didn’t stand out amongst the horde of bankers at Credit Suisse. But somehow, this unlikely man became a tech icon worth $8.6 billion.
“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.”
Peter Thiel, Zero to One
In The Contrarian, Max Chafkin tells the story of how Thiel became one of the best known, and most controversial, technologists of our time.
How Peter Thinks
Whenever someone makes an argument to Thiel, he runs through an exercise: what if what they’re saying is false?
This is a great way to evaluate ideas. I often use it myself.
If I can’t invalidate an argument, I have to accept it. But Thiel’s technique makes sure that I carefully examine every idea.
Independent thinking has led Thiel to some of the biggest scores in Silicon Valley history. They weren’t obvious picks — a social network for a handful of college kids, or esoteric software for the Pentagon.
But they worked.
Missing Tesla and YouTube
One thing about The Contrarian that shocked me was how many mistakes Thiel made.
He passed on YouTube, now the world’s biggest video sharing site. He also passed on Tesla, despite knowing Elon Musk personally!
These investments would have made him billions in gains. But they slipped right through his fingers.
Even the best make huge mistakes. But in venture capital, what matters are your wins, not the companies you missed.
Valuations Aren’t Everything
Thiel’s investment in Facebook could not have gone better. Growth was vertical and now the social network was raising money again.
Surely he’d want to double down, right?
Wrong. Thiel thought the $500 million valuation was outrageous, and declined to re-invest.
Facebook is now worth $788 billion. Thiel’s mistake cost him a fortune.
This is something I’ve heard time and time again from investors — “I passed on the next round because it seemed too expensive.” Every time, they live to regret it.
I’m keeping this in mind for my own investments.
Idiot Insurance
If that wasn’t bad enough, Thiel also dumped all his Facebook stock shortly after the IPO. The stock went on to soar, nearly quadrupling in just five years.
Thiel saw none of those gains.
This is why some investors take out “idiot insurance.” They sell half their position, keeping the other half.
This way, they’ve taken meaningful cash off the table. But if the stock rips in the future, they can still benefit.
It All Comes Out in the Wash
With all these mistakes, Thiel looks like a huge failure, doesn’t he?
But of course, he’s anything but.
That’s the nature of our business. If you hit one big winner, it makes up for all the mistakes.
Facebook alone would’ve made Thiel an icon. To it, he added Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril and many more.
Whatever Thiel did wrong, he also had the courage to back companies few people would touch. That conviction has earned him billions.
Wrap-Up
The Contrarian also goes into great detail on Thiel’s misadventures in politics. While I don’t share his political views, I’ve learned a lot from Thiel’s business career.
We don’t have to agree with everything a man does in order to learn from him.
What have you learned from Peter Thiel? Leave a comment and let us know!
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One hundred and sixty years ago, this was the most dangerous place on earth. This is Seminary Ridge, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
From this spot, General Robert E. Lee launched a massive attack on Union forces. After two days of intense fighting, this assault would decide the Battle of Gettysburg.
The Final Battle
Confederate cannon pounded the Union position on Cemetery Ridge. In the woods just behind the artillery, 13,000 men prepared a massive infantry assault.
“Don’t forget today that you are from Old Virginia!”
Major General George E. Pickett
At about 2pm, the rebels emerged from the woods. They faced a one mile march across open ground in order to reach the Union line.
I wonder what was in these men’s minds at this moment.
Most were little more than boys. Many had probably never left their hometowns.
This may have been their one experience of the outside world.
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863…”
William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
Pickett’s Charge
The march began, to the tune of fife and drums.
Then, the Union cannons roared. These young boys were cut apart — and still they marched.
The Confederate artillery had mostly failed to soften up the Union defenses. Many of the cannonballs had overshot Union lines.
As the Confederates got closer, cannonballs were replaced by canister fire. This devastating ammunition was composed of a canister filled with metal balls.
It effectively turned a cannon into a massive shotgun. Metal balls skipped off the ground, ripping apart the soldiers’ bodies.
The Union Triumph
Brigadier General Lewis Armistead was one of the few Confederates to survive this barrage and make it through the Union lines. Just as he crossed the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge, Armistead was mortally wounded.
He fell just passed the Union lines.
This spot marks the high-water mark of the Confederacy. No rebel troops ever advanced further north.
The Confederates took nearly 7,000 casualties in less than an hour — nearly 2 every second. Pickett’s Charge marked the turning point of the Battle of Gettysburg, and ultimately of the entire war.
Seminary Ridge Today
As I looked out from Seminary Ridge this past Sunday, I was struck by how futile this assault was. Indeed, one of Lee’s generals, James Longstreet, opposed the charge.
Troops were standing in the middle of a field with artillery fire raining down on them. What chance did they have of success?
We are used to viewing the Confederates as devils and the Union troops as saints. But for a young boy born in Virginia, what choice was there?
Many of the Southern troops were drafted. Most were poor.
They had no say in where they went or what they fought for. Their position wasn’t so different than that of the slaves whose freedom was at stake.
Walking this bloodsoaked ground exactly 160 years and 2 months later, I was grateful for the peace we now have. People from all over the country, and indeed the world, can come here in peace and learn about the past.
Today, Seminary Ridge is quiet. The field ahead is full of crops, as it has been for centuries.
One of the most anticipated hedge fund launches of recent years has turned into a disaster. Two Citadel traders have lost approximately $300 million this year.
Europe’s biggest hedge fund startup in 2021, founded by two former Citadel money managers Niall O’Keeffe and Tio Charbaghi, has suffered heavy losses.
Their FIFTHDELTA hedge fund that bets on rising and falling stocks lost about 13% in July, extending declines for 2023 to as much as 29% before paring year-to-date losses to 25%, people with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential matter.
The fund began with about $1.3 billion, implying current losses of over $300 million.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. At the beginning, FIFTHDELTA was so hot it was closed to new investors.
Now, they’re raising money again and trying to claw their way out of a deep financial hole.
Citadel traders like O’Keeffe and Charbaghi are considered to be the best of the best. But markets don’t care what’s on your resume.
The fund’s abysmal performance is all the more shocking given this year’s bull market. The S&P 500 index is up over 18% in 2023 so far.
I captured that 18% return at the cost of just a couple basis points in fees to Vanguard. Meanwhile, most hedge fund investors pay a 2% management fee every year — often for far worse performance.
While FIFTHDELTA appears to be weathering the storm for now, it’s swimming against powerful tides in markets.
There are more hedge fund closures than openings these days. Institutions are putting their money with the big players, not upstarts like FIFTHDELTA.
A small, new manager like FIFTHDELTA is already a hard sell. Come into a pitch meeting with rotten returns, and you’ll never see a check.
Long term, I think the long/short strategy of FIFTHDELTA and so many other funds is a loser. The long-term trend in markets is upward — meaning you’ll lose money on your shorts.
What’s more, short positions are costly to maintain. You have to pay interest on the shares you borrow.
Even worse, your gains are capped at 100%. Meanwhile, your potential losses are unlimited.
As FIFTHDELTA teeters, I expect top traders will jump ship. When a fund is carrying big losses, bonuses may not come for years.
People join hedge funds for the money. If the money’s no longer there, they’re out.
What do you think the future holds for FIFTHDELTA and other hedge funds? Leave a comment and let us know.
Tremendous will be off until Wednesday, September 6th. Have a great Labor Day weekend, everybody!
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When I invest in a startup, it’s just the beginning. I’m scrutinizing every update to see if this will be one of the few, the proud, the Follow-On Investments.
The Feeler Bet
I make a series of bets on the best companies, not just one. My first check is usually what I call a “feeler bet” of around $5,000.
It’s just a small check that helps me get to know the founders. I start getting the investor updates and helping where I can.
This gives me the insider’s view of the company.
I see what’s going well. I also start to see problems that outsiders aren’t aware of.
Double Down
After a year or two, most companies are ready to raise more capital. At that time, I have to make a big decision: double down, or cut my losses?
I want to significantly increase my ownership in a handful of the best companies. I re-invest in around 20% of the companies I back.
For those winners, I usually want to increase my bet by 4-5x.
How My Bets Work
I usually make one or two follow-on bets. These generally come at the Seed Extension or Series A.
At that stage, I have enough information about the startup to make an informed decision. At the same time, the price is still low enough to give me a lot of upside.
Whether I make two smaller bets or one big one depends on where the company is at.
For a startup I re-invested in recently, I gave them $10,000 now, with another $10,000 earmarked for their next round. They were at around $3 million a year in revenue, meaning that I can probably invest again in the next round at a valuation below $30-40 million, my sweet spot for follow-on.
For another company I doubled down on recently, I coughed up the whole $20,000 at once.
They were already at $10 million ARR. The train was leaving the station.
Their next round could be at over a $100 million valuation — more than I want to pay. So it was now or never.
So Who Gets The Money?
I only do follow-on in the very best companies.
I want to see rapid revenue growth. Startups should be tripling revenue year over year, or at least doubling if revenue is over $1 million.
Burn must also be reasonable. I want to see a burn multiple at 2 or less.
Together, these metrics tell me the company’s product is catching on. They also tell me that the growth is sustainable and the company is unlikely to flame out.
The Power Law at Work
The fundamental rule of venture capital is the power law. The power law holds that a tiny fraction of companies give us almost all our returns.
I’ve invested in 26 companies. Realistically, one or two will probably give me almost 100% of my gains.
After a year or two working with a startup, I have a far better idea if it’s a leader or not. I then use that information to my advantage.
I increase my ownership percentage in those couple of winners, while standing pat on the struggling companies. This should magnify my returns in the top startups.
How Pro Rata Fits In
Pro rata is the right, but not the obligation, to re-invest in a startup. If you have pro rata, you have the right to re-invest enough money to maintain your ownership percentage in future rounds of funding.
Despite all the play pro rata gets in books on venture, it’s mostly irrelevant to my investments.
I almost never want to take exactly my pro rata share of a funding round. Either I want to take far more (“super pro rata”) or nothing at all.
Think about it — how likely is it that the exact optimal investment in a round just happens to be the $5,351 that you’re entitled to under pro rata?
That said, pro rata is valuable in competitive rounds. Maybe I can’t increase my ownership, but at least I can defend my position against dilution.
I have pro rata rights in almost every deal I do. You should certainly get them if you can.
Having to Say No to Great Founders
The hardest part of follow-on is having to say no to great founders. Just recently, a very hard working founder in my portfolio asked for another check.
I knew that he’s toiled tirelessly, day and night, to make the company a success. I have great respect for his dedication.
But the progress just wasn’t there. So I passed.
If you give more money to everyone, your returns will stink. What’s more, it’s not fair to those companies that have done everything you’ve asked, and more.
The good news for that founder is that the situation can change! If his company starts crushing it, I’ll be beating down his door to put in another check.
That’s why my answer is never “no,” but “not yet.”
Wrap-Up
Follow-on investing is a superpower.
You gain bigger and bigger slices of your winners. Re-investments and markups can make your top investments dozens of times larger than your failures.
Be ruthless in your follow-on decisions.
Only the best companies should get those extra checks. Throwing good money after bad doesn’t work.
You can still support the struggling companies with introductions and advice. But this is a business, and coffee is for closers.
Do you do follow-on investments? Why or why not?
Leave a comment and let us know!
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As people come back to offices, the Bay Area vs. The Rest argument is back. So today, I thought I’d show you where I’m actually investing right now.
I’ve invested in 26 startups in the last 28 months. Here’s where they’re located:
SF: 5 NYC: 4 LA: 3 Silicon Valley: 2 Phoenix: 2 Austin: 1 Chattanooga, TN: 1 Fort Lauderdale, FL: 1 London: 1 Minneapolis: 1 Portland, OR: 1 Raleigh, NC: 1 Sacramento: 1 Salt Lake City, UT: 1 San Diego: 1
The Twin Capitals of Tech
Two areas stand out: the Bay Area and New York. The Bay Area collectively has 7 companies, just over a quarter of the total.
NYC is also heavily represented, with 4 companies, or 15% of the total.
This fits what I’m seeing happen in the market now. Today, the world of tech has two capitals: SF and NYC.
Over time, I’ve invested in fewer Bay Area companies and more NYC startups. This fits a trend I’m seeing of entrepreneurs moving from the Bay to Silicon Alley.
But venture is all about finding the best companies. So, where are my most successful startups?
The Best of the Best
In my portfolio so far, 5 companies have really stood out. They’ve scaled to millions in revenue with low burn.
They just might be the next unicorns. Here’s where they are:
Sacramento: 1 Austin: 1 NYC: 1 SF: 1 Salt Lake City: 1
The locations seem pretty random, and no city has more than one.
Maybe it’s just the small sample size. Or maybe talent is more evenly distributed than we think.
But Don’t Read Too Much Into “Location”…
“Location” is a slippery concept with companies these days, especially startups.
I did the numbers based on where the founder lives. Usually several of the co-founders live there as well.
But almost every startup in my portfolio hires remote employees. Remote work makes top talent easier to access. It can also be cheaper, especially if you hire overseas.
Wrap-Up
Do I favor any one location over another? Not really.
Experience has told me that good startups show up all over the place. They’re a little more likely to pop up in the Bay or NYC, if for no other reason than that ambitious people tend to move to those cities.
But they also pop up in Chattanooga and Salt Lake. And when they do, I’ll be there, looking for my slice.
Where are you investing these days? Leave a comment and let us know!
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“There’s no line of code that says ‘slow down for speed bumps.’ So it’s doing this based entirely on video training.”
Elon Musk
A New Kind of AI
On Friday, Elon Musk demoed FSD 12, Tesla’s latest self driving software. Watching the demo is at turns nervewracking and exhilarating.
Tesla’s latest self-driving system doesn’t work from a list of traffic laws. Instead, it digests countless hours of video of humans driving, learning bit by bit.
The system, which has yet to be released, is unlike anything on the road today.
Let’s take a ride along with Elon and see it in action!
Rolling With Elon
As we pulled out, my breathing sped up and my heart began to race. Even as a viewer, this loss of control is scary at first.
The car happens upon a construction site almost right away. Surely this will confuse the FSD, right?
Wrong. Autopilot navigates it smoothly and confidently, despite never having seen that construction site before.
As we glide down the verdant Palo Alto streets, we slow for a speed bump. The car handles it with aplomb, then glides back to normal speed.
Up one street and down another, our Tesla is steady and calm. The nearly silent car whirs about autonomously as we listen to classical music.
How different is this from the stinky, belching gasoline cars driven by angry drivers that we’ve known all our lives? We’re seeing the future, and I love it.
But There Are Still a Few Kinks…
Elon does have to intervene once, about 20 minutes into the video. Autopilot tries to advance into an intersection as oncoming traffic is turning left.
Elon is able to quickly stop it long before there’s any danger. But quirks like this is why FSD 12 isn’t publicly available yet.
“…the solution is essentially to feed the network a bunch more video of traffic lights,” Elon muses.
How FSD 12 Changes Everything
Before FSD 12, Tesla autopilot used countless C++ rules to determine its behavior. Now, all those rules are gone.
In their place: a huge dataset of actual driving. FSD watches the videos at warp speed and incorporates their lessons.
ChatGPT already works this way. It produces a blog post not by following a bunch of rules, but by reading other blogs and producing something similar.
This works great in the world of bits. Why not try it in the world of atoms?
The Future of Robotics
A Tesla equipped with FSD is essentially a robot. I’m itching to see the lessons of FSD 12 applied to other branches of robotics.
Imagine a robot that can lay brick because it has watched millions of hours of video of humans laying brick. That could drastically cut the cost and time it takes to build a house.
YouTube might become the world’s most valuable dataset. It contains countless hours of, well, anyone doing anything.
Robots could learn to paint houses, assemble iPhones, or play the violin.
Is it Safe?
Autopilot performed flawlessly for all but a few seconds of the 50 minute demo. But sometimes, it’s those few seconds that count.
Aided by the classical music, the drive that scared me at first soon began to lull me to sleep. This will probably happen to many human drivers.
When it does, will they be quick enough to stop Autopilot before it makes a huge mistake?
I’m glad Tesla is waiting to release this until they test it further. An autopilot that works most of the time may be worse than no autopilot at all.
But let’s not forget what rotten drivers humans are. I recently saw a man cruising down the street in a Bentley SUV, vacuuming his dashboard with a tiny vacuum!
Was his full attention on the road? I think not.
It won’t be hard for Autopilot to beat the average distracted, excitable human driver. As a lifelong pedestrian, I look forward to a future with cars driven by robots immune to boredom, impatience or intoxication.
Wrap-Up
What ChatGPT did for bits, Autopilot may do for the real world. Flexible AI systems that learn from experience can transform our lives.
Let the robots take over mundane tasks like driving. We’ll have more time to unleash our human creativity.
Or maybe just vacuum our dashboards.
What do you think of Elon’s demo? Leave a comment and let us know!
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“How’s that eggplant parm?” “Try some…” “Whoa, that’s really good.”
Tasting is believing, and when I first bit into the eggplant parm at Rosticeria Da Gigi, I became a believer.
In a prime location on Hoboken’s Washington Street, Rosticeria Da Gigi serves up Italian and American dishes of the highest quality. And the prices are a blast from the past.
“What’s up boys?” I called to my friends Tim, Matt and Jim* as I plopped down. After a tough workout and long sauna session last Saturday, it was time to relax.
We quietly perused the extensive menu. I nearly got the papardelle with wild mushrooms…surely an umami tour de force.
“I think we’re going to need another minute,” Tim told the waitress as he scoured the menu with Talmudic intensity.
“I’ll have the eggplant parm with spaghetti,” I exclaimed. Who was I kidding? I was destined for eggplant parm all along.
“Ham and brie sandwich,” Tim ordered. Classy.
“I gotta have the meatball parm sub,” Matt said. Neither he nor I could budge from our favorite order.
Jim went with chicken parm. Traditional, yet somehow always still special.
We relaxed, chatting and laughing, all the while pregnant with anticipation. As wonderful as seeing new photos of my friend Jim’s son was, I knew the man I really wanted to see was Mr. Parmesan.
A hush fell over the table. The first plate was coming out.
First was Tim’s brie sandwich. Then the chicken…
Matt grinned as the massive meatball parm sub landed with a thud in front of him.
Ahhh….my eggplant.
I cut through layer after layer of beautifully breaded aubergine, stabbing them with my fork and mopping up red sauce. A triumph.
On to the macaroni…
The side of spaghetti is no afterthought at Da Gigi. The pasta is al dente, the sauce so deeply redolent of tomato you can almost taste the sun.
And the cheese! The thick slab of mozzarella atop my eggplant is the best I’ve had on any parm anywhere.
“Would you like extra parmesan?”
“Yes please.” Why not double my money?
I dug deep into the endless pile of eggplant. There was no giving up now!
Having undone my entire workout, I sat back contented. Da Gigi had done it again — an outstanding meal.
“Look at the bill.” “How is it $56 for four people?”
Unlike many restaurants today, Da Gigi won’t hurt your pocketbook. The prices are modest, as if from another era.
I left extra tip for the energetic waitress, who seems to be in constant motion. At this table, you’ll want for nothing.
Rosticeria Da Gigi is open 7 days a week from morning till late. In addition to Italian specialties, they serve a lovely breakfast all day.
Stop in for some of the best Italian food in Hoboken!
What’s your favorite Italian restaurant? Leave a comment and let us know!
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!
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