[Pigging by Wilfrid: February 16, 2009]
Now be honest, how many of you had just forgotten about this little dining room on East 4th Street? Show of hands.
I thought so. It has been around since early 2006, and in these penny-pinching times the headline has to be that the price of the chef's tasting menu hasn't changed: five courses, $45.
But is it good? History lesson: chef Damien Brassel earned a Michelin star at Peacock Alley in Dublin as a very young man. Somewhere along the way, he developed a passion for cooking at the cutting edge - he cites Blumenthal and Veyrat as inspirations - and for reasons unknown to me, he brought his skill and enthusiasm to a cramped kitchen in the East Village and tried his hand at cooking complex, multi-layered dishes virtually single-handed.
With mixed results, it had to be said. When I first visited, in the early days, I noted an awful lot of foams. I well recall a duck breast so tenderly cooked - sous vide? - that it was almost duck sashimi, and pungently scented with lavendar. I strove to be a fan, but the food was almost too challenging. I was also skeptical that one chef and a dishwasher could maintain standards at this level of ambition once the place took off.
So I made one of those armchair judgments - this can't work - and waited to be proved right. Well I was wrong. Passing the place periodically, I'd be surprised it was still there. I'd stop and read the elaborate descriptions on the menu, shake my head, and go on my way. It drifted off the radar.
One day recently I made up my mind to go back. And to be honest, one reason was that $45 tasting menu, which stood out like a beacon after my recent $140 experience at Chanterelle. It turned out that other diners had not forgotten the place: on a weekend evening it was slammed - uncomfortably slow - and I had the strong impression that many of the patrons were regulars.
You step directly into the action from the street. A curved wooden bar to your left, wooden booths to your right, and a string of tables wedged in between - essentially two-tops, but so close together it might as well be communal dining. One or two seats on the bar side of these tables are especially tight, and the staff do well to manoeuver about the room at all. It was quieter when I returned on a weekday.
Speaking of staff, the kitchen team has increased by 33% somewhere along the way. In addition to the chef and the guy cleaning up, there's someone who seems to act as sous-chef. You can watch the three of them climb over and around each other in an open kitchen about the size of an M.R.I. machine. To my surprise, far from being in the weeds with a packed house, the kitchen proved capable of sending out dishes at a steady, enjoyable pace.
The tasting seems to be put together from the carte, with an appropriate downsizing of portions. First up, a silky risotto with tea-smoked chicken and an "overnight" tomato tapenade. Brassel smokes the chicken himself, and the taste and texture are luxurious. I strongly believe this was followed by a really good scallop dish, but it's absent from my notes so I may have dreamt it.
Also notable is the bread service: doorstep-thick hunks of home-made six grain Irish soda bread, dark, moist, malty, with a hefty crust. Loaves can be purchased.
Pollock is a fish which has made a sudden appearance on New York menus, perhaps because it's more economical to serve than cod. If it's fresh and well cooked, that's fine, and this was, with the skin nicely crisped.
With a simple, lavendar crème brûlée to finish, this was a knockout meal at the price. Indeed, it wouldn't have provoked the slightest complaint to have been charged twice the price - preferably in a slightly more leisurely ambience.
Impressed, I returned to explore the carte. This provided confirmation that the tasting menu is the way to go. For one thing, with entrées around $28, a three course meal of your own choice costs more than the chef's tasting. In individual dishes, Brassel gives himself a wider canvas and more freedom - not always a good thing. The use of very large, square white plates affords an opportunity to multiply the variety of ingredients in a dish, and unlikely combinations result.
Take the Hudson Valley foie gras. The firm texture of the three - was it four? - torchons arrayed across the plate persuades me that it is prepare inhouse. It's good, although I found it useful to sprinkle a little of the sea salt which had come with the bread and butter. Each torchon was topped with a slice of blood orange, caramelised to crispness but with that slight gassy accent grilled fruit can develop. A very rich blood orange marmalade was also served, as well as some crisp pickled shallots. There was nothing to hold these elements together, and either of them would have overwhelmed the foie. As a final touch, there was some Wylie-esque gravel on the plate which I identified as cocoa nibs (the dishes aren't described when they're served).
As an aside, chef Brassel has recently enjoyed the attention of some anti-foie fanatics, who apparently suppose that the appropriate way to get foie gras banned in New York is not to lobby for a change in the law but to molest small businesses and their customers. If that's their theory, I wish they'd take their practice uptown to Restaurant Daniel or L'Atelier de JoëlRobuchon, where foir must be served by the ton in comparison to Knife + Fork. At least those businesses can spare the staff to attend to the protestors. Taking on Brassel's small-scale operation is just an act of bullying.
Back to the food: I followed the foie with the lamb loin. Although Brassel's skill was evident again here, with each component of the dish faultlessly prepared, the overall composition pulled in different directions. Lamb served over a stew of pearl barley and carrots is a taste of childhood for me. It's a classic Irish, not to mention English and Scottish, combination.
At dinner, Dr Johnson ate several plate-fulls of Scotch broth, with barley and peas in it, and seemed very fond of the dish. I said, ‘You never ate it before.’ JOHNSON. ‘No, sir; but I don’t care how soon I eat it again.’
And yet the lamb here was rubbed with a Middle Eastern spice mix. The barley was touched with saffron. The main garnish was a large helping of tapenade, and there were crisp brussel sprouts, trumpet mushrooms, and some goat cheese in the somewhere too. The jet black tapenade may have been the best I've ever tasted. The lamb was excellent, and I am a sucker for barley. Still, it was a dish somewhat at war with itself.
The wine list has well-priced bottles, all under $100. With the tasting, I drank a Navarro tempranillo by Castillo de Montjardin, fine for thirty or so dollars. Wines by the glass are more steeply priced, although the pours seemed huge. $15 for a glass of Rias Baixas albariño took me aback, as you can get a good bottle in this city for less than that. Similarly, $12 buys you a glass of Martin de la Garrigue red Languedoc; $13 would but you a bottle from Le Du's wines. But I suppose Knife + Fork must make its money somewhere: working within the constraints imposed by the multi-course experience, Brassel is turning out food worth much more than he asks for it.
Your stomach and wallet will thank me.
The website is here.
