[Pigging by Wilfrid: July 5, 2010]
"Words in papers, words in books, words on TV, words for cooks..." Okay, the Tom Tom Club actually sang "words for crooks," but don't you find your dinner and the contents of your larder talking back these days?
Having run my eyes down the menu - a sheet of recycled paper, bulldog-clipped to some tatty cardboard, I flipped it over and was surprised to find a second page of text. After snacks, appetizers, mains and dessert, what else could the restaurant need to communicate? Oh, a lot. Reams of marvelous information about the low acidity (or was it low pH?) recycled paper, the sustainable chair on which I was sitting (it looked like white plastic), the hand-tooled dinnerware, the reclaimed wood for the tables which didn't look like white plastic (there are some), soy-based candles and organic cleaning products, and of course the legendary bread baskets made by the "Mapuche people of Patagona."
I am not sure how the last item counts as "local," but I could lay awake for hours in any case wondering what the phrase "local, artisan indigenous" (sic) means.
Do you know what this all amounts to? The menu tells you: it is a "curation." No mere restaurant, on the one hand this is a humble "Kitchen" (mumsy, folksy, farmyardy) and at the same time a sort of global art exhibit, a museum without walls as Malraux said. (In the latter capacity it is well suited to be an adjuct to ABC Home, where New Yorkers spend vast sums of money on an incoherently international selection of footstools, drapes and knick-knacks.
Some three hundred words of exhortation before you lift spoon to mouth, and there are good causes mixed in with the imponderable ones. The most proximate good cause, the commitment to decent produce. Sound good. How does it taste?
Dinner began with a shock, in fact, and a reminder that ABC Kitchen is bound to be viewed in some respects, as Dan Barber lite. One is provided two radishes (there is salt already on the table). As if pulled fresh from the soil (from the dirt, I prefer to say). These were tiny, baby radishes, and I was warned they were a little "sharp." They were: complete palate stunners, a shock to the taste buds. They were, I admit, served so beautifully and gracefully that an offer of marriage might have been made, were I unattached. But they weren't a great prelude to dinner.
Some candidates from the snack Market Table section of the menu followed, beginning with heirloom tomato toast. I am a detached critic of tomatoes. I couldn't eat them when I was young, still regard them with suspicion, but have confidence in my ability to tell a good one when I taste it. The acme for heirloom tomatoes in New York is still Blue Hill, where such a startling range of taste, texture and color is conjured in a bowl that you'd think you were dealing with ten different fruit rather than ten varieties of one.
Given the greenmarket just over there, I think I expected a spectrum of tomatoes on the toast - excellent, by the way, and richly cheesy. But this was one tomato. A big old tomato. I am tempted to write "beefsteak," but that might upset someone. What it wasn't was a special tomato. With a decent load of bread, I could do better at home, because I can shop for tomatoes better than this.
The anti-climax, then, following the breathless stream of claims and promises. Chewing I had time to think, and wonder why - if the terms of what amounted to a social policy document - "Our standards and commitments" - were so compellingly virtuous - the same standards did not apply to Jean-Georges restaurants across the country and around the world.
The answer is evident. I am sure some of the standards do so apply. Some don't - dinner at the flagship isn't served on - apologies to the artist - these rather dingy, flimsy porcelain dishes. The difference is that people don't always want to hear about it. Upper East Side diners tucking their bibs under their pearls at The Mark may not care whether the herbs on their pizzas come from a rooftop garden. ABC Kitchen is a conversation as much as a restaurant - aimed at that group of diners interested in that set of subjects.
Back to the table, and again simplicity ovewhelmed ambition. A single portobello mushroom cap, piping hot, sprinkled with chopped parsley and drizzled with olive oil. I am surprised celery leaves don't have more currency as a garnish. They taste good, and they are, after all, the vegetable equivalent of offal: something we're used to throwing away. Nothing unpleasant about the dish, but you can get a very good portobello mushroom dish at Lina Frey at half the price and without the accompanying invocations. It reminded me too that Craft, a more expensive restaurant but with a more exciting approach to mushrooms, was a step away.
When an ingredient does live up to billing, the result is stellar. Maine diver scallops (local enough I suppose) were sweet and nutty, sliced and served raw. Thankfully they weren't blasted with salt or drowned in oil. The freshly grated horseradish made me nervous, but in fact it's very mild in flavor, almost a textural element in the composition. The menu mentions no lemon, but there was a citrusy dressing lurking, and a bit too much of it as one reached the end of the dish, but this was a splendid demonstration of how the kitchen's philosophy can work.
If we like to talk about vegetables now, we love to talk about meat. Remember when animals were raised by farmers, slaughtered and the meat sold in cuts by butchers? No longer. The discourse (the term is apt) has entirely changed. Pig farmers are now "purveyors," as in this commentary by a Cleveland chef in a recent magazine:
"(My purveyor) cares so much about his animals, I'll tell him I need a 300-pound pig in two weeks, and he'll call back and say, 'That pig looks uncomfortable being so big...'" One might think the pig was enjoying a spa holiday, but had slipped out to McDonalds while unobserved. There is no sense that this is an animal about to be killed and eaten. Just as "butchered" has been replaced by "broken down," we are entering a period of the Disneyfication of livestock, the aim being to make us feel better about the pendulum swinging from arugula and rocket to pork belly and duck necks.
Not a very meaty menu here at all. There's a burger or strip steak from the country's only Akaushi herd. There's pork in breadcrumbs. The lobster looked good as an alternative to meat, but I didn't get a taste. I settled for chicken.
Cooked, I suspect, by some version of the brick method, the breast and wing piece comes out flat and golden and as crispy as you could wish. I was looking forward to the mashed potatoes with sea salt, but the intrusion of escarole was surprisingly unpleasant. Unlike the chicken, it was cold; it was also drenched in a sharp vinaigrette which in moments had made the potatoes cold and vinegary too. I had to rearrange the food to keep the chicken away from it. The excess dressing formed a forbidding puddle in the middle of the plate. A pity, because the chicken was fine, and I could tell the potatoes had started out that way too.
No sign of cheeses - either local, artisan or indigenous - so dessert (there is an extraordinary array of cakes and tarts under old-fashioned glass domes on the counter at the rear. Rhubarb crumble, classic, entirely satisfactory, vanilla ice cream on top. The fuzziness on the tongue which often follows consumption of fresh rhubarb was a price worth paying.
Speaking of prices, ABC Kitchen ought to reserve some menu space to boast of its commitment to not robbing your pockets. For a Jean-Georges operation, tucked behind the absurdly over-priced furnishing store, this is something of a bargain. The division of savory dishes into three sections - Market Table, appetizers and entrées - encourages ordering more than three courses. It's an affordable option, and indeed a good way to approach ABC is to order a succession of the smaller dishes.
Most of these run from $8 to $12, entrées are mostly in the twenties. Even the lobster, in recognition I suppose of the reported glut, demands only $37. You can manage cost too by dipping into the pasta and pizza selection. With modest wine, this check can dip well below $100 a head, which is good news these days. Most of the wines on the two page list are appropriately modest too - a handful of trophy bottles, but several under forty bucks as well.
A pointless disco soundtrack is offset by sweet, attentive and informed service. You may find better food in this style at Craft or Blue Hill but will pay much more for it. ABC Kitchen is more like what the larger rendition of the Tasting Room tried to be, and it's doing a better job of it.
