Quick Bites: Broadway East And Veritas

[Pigging by Wilfrid: June 9, 2008]

I finally gave way to curiosity about how the kitchen at Veritas was faring without founding chef Scott Bryan - and I gave way at just the wrong moment.  No sooner had I hitched myself to the bar one quiet evening and worked through a nice dinner, than Bryan's replacement Ed Cotton upped and left.

No need to keep the pictures to myself, although it's Gregory Pugin, formerly of Robuchon's New York outpost, who is now in the Veritas kitchen.

Scroll down for flexitarian Broadway East...

Cotton had continued the restaurant's tradition of preparing food which could serve as a backdrop to what is still an extraordinary cellar.  As is often the case, the more you can afford to spend, the better a bargain the  wine will be.  And if you don't happen to have five hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket, let me direct your attention to the half bottles.

Note for example, a small format Margaux, the 1999, priced at $175.  Steep, sure, but for some reason way under half the price of the full bottle, which appears in their extensive vertical of the label.  In fact, I was lured to a small Tignanello, maybe because I have some full bottles at home which I don't want to open yet.  It sucked $125 from my long-suffering wallet, but given the current New York retail price of around $65, that's almost a discount.  Red fruit, cherries mainly, slightly peppery, and with that indefinable elegance in the mouth.

It handled snails and pork just fine.  The snail dish was unmissable, in the wake of Frank Bruni's puzzling objection to New York chefs sending out ingredients in several different preparations.  The Frankula's preference for one simple slab of protein is hardly shared by discerning diners.  But never mind: snails done two ways couldn't be passed up.

The chef had made, essentially, a snail forcemeat with plenty of herbs and rolled it in a delicate pasta to make, in effect, an attractive and tasty snail loaf. This worked brilliantly. Unfortunately, the simply braised snails had gone completely unseasoned. A tasteless snail is not a fun thing to eat. In conception, though, an interesting dish, and it would have been a very good one with a little more attention.

I am guessing a slow-cooking technique had been used with the pork chop, which was sweet and tender enough; personally I liked a little bit of searing, and it can be achieved on a piece of meat that thick without drying out the center. Egg is the new black, or whatever, and sneaked into the dish dressed as a raviolo.  Fresh peas, a miniscule helping of morels - fantastically expensive this year - all appropriate.  Again, it's a personal thing, but I wouldn't give onion rings to people who might be drinking Petrus. 

Broadway East

And so to East Broadway, that formerly ignored and bleak strip running from the periphery of Chinatown through the old Jewish neighborhood one might almost call the lower Lower East Side. 

The historic Daily Forward building, across from Seward Park - formerly home to a Yiddish newspaper which commanded a mass audience in the 1920s and '30s - was recently restored as luxury condos.  The 169 Bar, once a fairly rough dive, now hosts live music and essays an ersatz New Orleans ambience.  And right between the two, the time seems more or less right for a moderately smart restaurant.

Whether the first restaurant of ambition in the immediate area is wisely conceived as a vegetarian destination remains to be seen.  There will surely be some smart vegatarians/vegans moving into the neighborhood - but how many?  And will the Pure Food and Wine crowd travel down to East Broadway for dinner?

Time will tell.  Currently, the restaurant's official stance is "flexitarian", which means there are a few meat and fish dishes on a menu geared mainly toward the "V" crowd.  On the evidence of one supper, this is what it does least well.  A chicken paillard special was just a slice of pale grilled chicken, served with a large, fresh, but not especially exciting salad of green leaves.

Conversely, a vegan-ready salad of fennel and blood orange was spritely and well-imagined, the two main ingredients presenting a good contrast, and the added accents of (convincing) seitan chorizo, cashew "Manchego" and crisped black olives made the dish constantly interesting.

Cauliflower fritto misto with some large juicy capers was well-imagined too, but the lemon sauce was just too sweet and dessert-like.

The dish which most impressed me, though, was a fake Chinese duck. The menu makes no mention of the bird, thus honored: it's described as "Peking-Style Snow Dried Tofu". And how one sets about drying tofu in snow remains a mystery.  Nevertheless, it came out fleshy and wrapped in something surprisingly like duck skin.  Add the miso hoisin sauce, the Chinese cabbage, and a brick of brown rice and quinoa, and you have a satisfying replica of a Chinatown special.

The space is modern, cleanly designed, and peaceful.  I'd say it was about half full on a weekend evening.  Cocktails are imaginative, but sake-based in the absence of a hard liquor license.  The wine list is committed to New York and New Jersey selections; admittedly the whites and pinks which these regions do best suit the cuisine.

Broadway East has set itself an unusual challenge, and it's too soon to call it a winner or loser.  One to watch.

You'll find it on the web here.

Veritas sells its wares over here.