[Pigging by Wilfrid: November 3, 2008]
A tough season, perhaps, for anyone named Joe, although calling a restaurant "Joe Doe" does leave something of a blank canvas for the critical imagination.
For a time, I had it mentally filed as John Doe, with all the unappetizing associations of a label tied to the toe of a stiff in the morgue. But Joe is Joe Dobias.
And with his wife Jill running front of house, Joe Doe at least conjures a warmer atmosphere than that association suggests. I do wonder how some restaurants end up with the names they have - so many recently have seemed to court anonymity (The Smith, for example), but it wasn't the odd name which did for Seymour Butts - sorry, Burton - the now-closed East Village casual of which I'm irresistibly reminded by the spirit and cuisine of Joe Doe.
To be fair, there's less of the self-taught rock-and-roll attitude in Joe's kitchen. Dobias worked at the Blue Grotto and at the overlooked Tupelo Grill near Penn Station, and has passed through a series of other Manhattan kitchens. Here, he visibly has his own space, working in the rear of the restaurant with one assistant, and turning out complicated dishes from a short menu with a brisk efficiency Seymour Burton could never rival.
I was prepared for Joe's to be a tiny space, and indeed had mentally located it among the little cubby-hole eateries on the north side of 1st Street between First and Second Avenues - Tuck Shop, Prune, what used to be the Tasting Room. In fact, it's on the other, darker side of the street, easily missed if you're not searching for it.
The dark wood space, decorated with a few small photos and mirrors, holds a line of small, tight tables on the left, and an up-to-the-minute dining counter on the right. Personal space is at a minimum, but you're not quite as cramped-in as at Prune. Insanity, though, for the food to be served on massive, heavy, variously shaped chargers and in bowls the size of sinks. An impression of generosity is sought, but it's just really hard, at times, to keep stuff on the table. Plink; there goes another fork.
The cooking here is very busy indeed, mustering - if anything - too many ingredients, some very good, to create each dish on the appropriately short menu. Nice fried chickpeas come as a snack while you consider whether pork belly and tuna is what you want for supper.
Challah bread, smoked salt, and plenty of truffle oil. These are elements with which the chef likes to work. A truffly aroma surrounded the Maine lobster, a tender piece of tail served out of the shell in a chervil-spiked broth.
Clams and sausage came with wedges of challah, which proved a useful vehicle for sopping up the rich, buttery juices. Sausage pieces were nicely porky. One of the signature appetizers at Seymour Burton had been oysters and sausage, but here the contrasting elements have been integrated into a dish rather than just placed on the same plate.
Unfortunately, the disparate parts of the main dishes didn't dovetail nearly as well. I ordered the pork belly-tuna with slight skepticism - this is a combination which seems a no-brainer, but it's failed me at other restaurants in the past. Here too. Thick slices of fish, slightly seared but otherwise raw are served over a thick sunchoke purée, slightly greenish under the lights.
A couple of yards over the other side of the giant plate, big wedges of pork belly looked like slices of sponge cake: darkly crisped top and bottom, lined with meat and fat between. These were served over a Concord grape coulis. The latter was, in itself, delicious. But it didn't meld particularly well with the pork, and the pork-grape and tuna-sunchoke pairings might have come from different planets. An ambitious dish, but at the end of the day less appetizing than, perhaps, a simple pork or tuna dish might have been.
It's a positive point that food is served in lavishly large portions here, but that means moving fast on the pork belly, which is not pleasant when cool.
The other entrée I tried suffered similarly from over-elaboration. Baby goat (or kid) seems to be enjoying a brief moment in the spotlight; I understand that Secession's version has been doing a brisk trade. It's a paler meat than full-grown goat, but similarly challenged by some gristly, chewy bits which are worth trimming off. There were chewy bits here.
Braised, the kid was served in its juices and garnished, unpredictably, with slices of raw apple. Not just any raw apple, though: these had been doused in some more of that truffle oil, in itself not an unpleasing effect.
Crowning the dish, a fried egg. Again, I'm not sure why: fried eggs are hardly a canonical accompaniment to braised meat, and although I like an egg over - say - asparagus and morels, or over sweetbreads as at Corton - I am not sure I want an egg on top of just anything. No big deal, but there was a further mystery at the bottom of the bowl. At first, I thought a slice challah was the stowaway - but no, it appeared to be a slice of some darker, grainier bread, soaked with goat juice. Myabe it was a bran muffin. It was all dizzyingly too much.
In a spirit of bracing oneself for further surprises, I tried a dessert special featuring piping hot deep-fried goat cheese with slices of peach (raw, skin-on), honey and black smoked rock salt. I liked it well enough, but again felt assailed from several different directions. The cheese was fierce and pungent, the honey and smoked salt each delicious, the combination - challenging.
Cocktails from the list were another negative, I'm afraid - the Tomatillo Sunset tasting mainly of lime and water. There's a very short list of inexpensive wines, none of which I knew. A New Zealand pinot noir was young, fruity and slightly fizzy on the tongue.
It should be said that Joe and Jill were doing sterling business. Reservations are not taken; I was seated right away, but it seemed that as soon as a party stood up from the counter or squeezed out from a table, more diners showed up. And I have to say a word about the prices. Cocktails are in the low teens (as are appetizers); with a couple of cocktails, two or three glasses of wine, and a shared dessert, the cost of dinner for two was around the $175 mark before gratuity.
There's a demand for very large plates of interesting food, and although comparisons with Prune are strained - Gabrielle Hamilton's cooking is much more European-Mediterranean in its inspiration - the quirkiness of Joe Doe's menu and the spontaneity of its accommodations will appeal, especially to younger diners. I noticed tables around me sharing appetizers and pairs of diners dipping their forks into the same main course. It makes sense - portions are generous enough. They instinctively avoided - as I did not - a $100-a-head dinner check.
An older palate would counsel fewer somersaults on the plate, more focus on identifying the main ingredient of a dish and doing it really well. Also, there are better wines available retail at $9/$10 mark which can credibly be offered at $30 on a list. But as long as the choices work for Joe and Jill and their diners, who am I to carp?
Joe's web-site is right here.
