Donatella

Issue: Where to hold WoPAC.

Rule: What is WoPAC you ask? It is a secret. However, I will tell that it consists of about a dozen beautiful women. All those beautiful women like to enjoy a few glasses of wine, share meals, laugh loud and linger at the table for a while. All without spending a boatload of money. We also like to celebrate accomplished women (ourselves very much included) and so picking a place run by Donatella Arpaia made perfect sense for the occasion.

Application: Donatella is a pizza joint in a way that can only happen in Chelsea. A huge, golden pizza oven sits in the back of the restaurant, the lights are turned way up- the better to scope out fellow eaters, and the pizzas themselves range up to $28 a pie. Yet our waiter was straight out of the Midwest and almost intimidated with our group of 10 increasingly tipsy ladies.

The best way to enjoy Donatella involves sharing, sharing and more sharing. For appetizers our table split three types of bruschetta- the stand out involved lemon and mint. We then split three salads including one with arugula and zucchini that was a personal favorite.

For the main course of pizzas we decided on five pies in total. A marinara for our vegan friend (delicious tomato sauce), two margheritas (crispy, cheesy and salty), cappellaccio (mushrooms and mozzarella) and diavola (the one with a kick). On an ambitious day with a full stomach I could have probably finished an entire pie by myself, but splitting with along with the salads and bruschetta made for a lovely meal. The pizzas were gobbled up quite quickly. We ended by sharing a cannoli, chocolate cake and zeppolli.

Conclusion: Oh, and we also split about four bottles of wine. The wine list has many reasonably priced bottles and out waiter was kind enough to suggest a light red for our final bottle of the night. We all hailed cabs or entered the subway in a downpour but everyone made their way home with a smile on her face. Our awesome group of ten accomplished women celebrated in style. When is the next meeting?