[Pigging by Wilfrid: June 22, 2007]
Why isn't Brad Farmerie's name on every New York feeder's lips, either as a chef or a juggler? With one hand, he feeds vibrant Australasian cuisine to hordes of modelly club-goers at Public; with the other, he slips smart titbits to a few discerning fine beaks in the back lounge known as The Monday Room.
(Baby sweetcorn and the remains of a duck/foie gras ballotine)
The Monday Room itself is clubby, but think the Metropolitan rather than The Box. Of course it's not private at all, and it's tiny, but it's secluded, deeply brown in its furnishings, suitably leathered and cossetting. The entrance is behind the busy front desk which directs Public's traffic, although in summer it also opens onto Public's front patio, giving exciting glimpses of young people deeply involved with their phones and make-up.
Not only does The Monday Room have its own wine-list and sommelier, or rather "wine steward" - indeed, it's primarily a wine-bar - it also has a completely different and differently-styled menu than Public; to the extent that I had to ask whether it shared the same chef. Apparently so, and I can only wonder at Chef Brad's ability to dispatch two such different cuisines during the same service. Reviewing Public earlier this year, I found the food "suprisingly good" - Australian with unself-consciously incorporated Asian (and indeed Italian and American) notes: foie gras with corn fritters, kangaroo filet, oxtail and frog ravioli. Brash food, in a good way, served in a brash, high volume room, at very fair prices (entreés in the mid-twenties).
In The Monday Room, Rubén Sanz Ramiro, offers not only sixty wines by half glass, glass, bottle, and myriad flights, but a menu of Chef Brad's small plates (what else?) reflecting sobriety, restraint, and meticulous construction, quite at odds with the tasty heartiness of a Public dish like the lamb shank (the size, shape and color of a large cow pat, and distinguished by a startlingly vertical bone). Ramiro is not only wine steward - a Fat Duck alumnus, no less - but maitre d' and captain in this small space. With a sparkling eye, and a moustache which would not have shamed a cavalry officer out of Tolstoy (bistro!), he has a disarming command of his widely-based, reasonably priced list.
It's strong on the unclassical regions of Spain and France - the Priorato, Bierzo, Rueda, Valdeorras, Chinon, Touraine. In champagnes, the téte de course is a 1998 vintage by Gaston Chiquet, whose N.V. is my current domestic preference. Good sherries too, and old ports.
Following the palate cleanser of radishes with salt to sprinkle, some filets of sea trout were served with - and my heart leapt - a "piccalilli" sauce. I grew up on jars of Heinz piccalilli, a thick, yellow goo, served as garnish to cheese or cold cuts. The Monday version was house-made and austere - recipes vary, but essentially it's a sweet mustard sauce. Alongside the delicate trout, some quite terrific bread: crunchy, country-style slices slathered with lemon zest (of the house, again) and spiked with jumbo caper berries. Everything working together here - flavor notes, textures - a very good start, framed by Frank Peillot's 2005 Rousette from Bugey, lemony-appley and crisp enough to complement the dish.
The next wine up was a real winner, and new to me: a white from the Priorato, the 2004 Cellar Cal Pla "Mas d'en Compte". The name of the wine connected Catalunya with Languedoc in my mind (Mas Cal Demoura, for example), but so did the flavor. This was a big, but clean, full-flavored mouthful, with the slightly funky sherry-ness I've found in Languedoc whites like the Roucaillat and Roucalhan of Haute Terres de Comberousses. Like those wines, a rich shellfish dish is the obvious way to go: a lobster dashi was offered, touched with lime, and dabbed with caviar.
Babycorn (see top of article) was brushed with a white-ish brown sugar powder and a cilantro emulsion, and nestled on a corn pureé I thought was slightly smoked. A presentation reminiscent of WD-50, although the little corn ears would doubtless have undergone some transformation at Wylie's hands. The Schlossgut Riesling claims in my notes to have been an '88. But you can never trust your notes. Ballotine of duck and foie gras reflects the classic correctness in some of this food - a small, neat portion of the meaty cylinder; a little mango sauce and some chives for decoration. An unusual and intriguing wine choice: the '05 Domaine de Bagnol's Marquis de Fesques, Cassis; lightly pink, plum-peach, with some acid.
A salsify salad, flavored somehow with the increasingly ubiquitous truffle, and a New Zealand venison carpaccio concluded the planned menu, along with a Greek red from a local varietal so mispelled in my notes that it's beyond recovery, and a more familiar New Zealand Martinborough pinot. The carpaccio - not truly raw, just nudged with heat - was exceptional, velvety and modestly gamey. We hadn't, perhaps, taken as deep a dive into the room's reds and we had into the whites, but the sun was going down at this point.
Room for the "surprise" course, though, Scotch eggs, made on this occasion with soft quail's eggs. The chef's twist was a cucumber garnish, and a dust of Moroccan spices, neatly linking the British classic with related dishes such as kibbeh.
Cheeses were from Saxelby's in Essex Street market, which I regard as a very good source, but the small plates had mounted up, and only chilled espresso panna cotta - lime juice, Kahlua cream could be contemplated. In fact, I ate two.
Add Chef Brad to the lengthening list of gifted New York cooks I would wish, in my crusty old way, to be serving full, classic dinners in a tranquil setting. Even so, crouching over a low bar table for this meal was no great hardship. The price? Crazy. About $85 a head (before tax and tip ), including the wine pairings - and at a glance, the wines are in the $20 to $30 bracket retail. You can sit in an average Manhattan wine-bar and drop $50 on a few glasses and a tapa, so I regard dinner in this civilised nook as - well, almost free.
The Monday Room's suitably decorous web-site is here.
