[Pigging by Wilfrid: July 27, 2009]
Nothing like a nice refreshing iceberg lettuce salad on a warm summer evening, right?
It was good news for neighborhood diners, and for the restaurant itself back in May, when chef Matt Hamilton announced his decision to pull back from involvement in Choice Atlantic, a Clinton Hill food store, and remain at Belcourt as chef and as a partner in the business.
With the addition of "terrace" dining - okay, tables on the sidewalk - Belcourt seems to be enjoying another good season walking the tightrope between being a lively East Village scene and a destination for thoughtful diners with reasonable noise tolerance. In fact, seating the people who like to be seen outside and opening up the windows makes for a more tranquil dining room altogether.
Recent dishes I've enjoyed included an appetizer in which iceberg lettuce gets star billing. I am not a big iceberg lettuce fan, and just wasn't raised on the traditional half-lettuce/blue-cheese dressing opener to a traditional steakhouse meal. The lettuce here, however, is bombarded with other good stuff. It's the foundation of the plate, and there's blue cheese flavor in there too. It's overlaid with a thick slice of tender pork belly, that meat of our dreams, which contrasts in turn with a rasher of super-crisp bacon (or pancetta, if you want to be Mediterranean about it). Nice garnish of radish slices too.
Unsatisfied with these effects, the kitchen adds chicken livers too, notably well-executed with a crispy exterior. And on top, the only ingredient as popular as pork belly, the great fried egg. This breaks all over the assembled meats to good effect, and the only marginal problem with the dish is that the broth of yolk and salad dressing which remains when you've eaten everything else needs a spoon to lap it up.
Not much less enjoyable was a slice of pork shoulder blade.
This cut is increasingly wowing Manhattan chefs, not just because it's flavorful and strikes a nice balance between fatty and lean, but because - of course - it's reasonably inexpensive (Terroir is serving a splendid version). When chefs make appealing dishes out of low-cost ingredients like pork shoulder or chicken gizzards or pig's tails, we should just applaud their ingenuity and thank them for staying in business. 2009 is not a whole foie gras year.
I am not sure how the trick is done, but the rind here is rendered crispy and deliciously edible without the whole slice of meat curling up like a tulip. When I cook this cut, I have to make incisions around the rind so the meat lies (more or less) flat on the plate. The seasoning is bold, and the meat is served over one of my favorite summer accompaniments, a succotash with cherry tomatoes.
I might add that this is still a restaurant where you can eat a couple of courses with a couple of glasses of wine for around fifty bucks, and we are getting to the point where a few "small plates" can add up to more than that.
The website seems to have less information than it used to, and the menu has changed, but here it is.