[Pigging by Wilfrid: November 23, 2011]
Traditional French, heavy on the meats and cheeses, on a leafy side street of Greenwich Village. Who can resist? I resisted Buvette for a while, though: reportedly the size of a postage stamp, I just wondered how hard it would be to get in.
To my surprise, I managed the trick readily late one evening. But believe me, luck was on my side.
Note that Buvette, in the evening, is dark, cozy and candlelit. The photos here may serve to give an impression of the food's presentation; they are instructive rather than illustrative.
The maƮtre d, who is a ball of energy, scooped me from the doorway and apologetically wedged me into a window seat: actually a stool, with a generous window ledge for table. I accepted the inevitable, and set to wrestling with the nutcracker, slightly too small for the mixed, fresh nuts.
Little boxes of these nuts, together with crackers, are scattered generously around the joint. People who like walnuts and hazelnuts, as well as peanuts, can crack them before, during and after dinner. That's what I did anyway. A nice touch, although concentration and dexterity are required.
Small is the word here. The interior of the restaurant is not quite as microscopic as I'd been led to imagine. The bar is tall and spacious. Some tables are crammed into the bar area. Up a few steps, there are larger tables in the rear. Space, however, is scant.
Buvette's response - and it lends the place its distinctive character - is to shrink everything down to size. Food comes on the little white plates which are stacked high everywhere. Sometimes in a bowl on a little white plate. Food service is fitted to one corner of the bar with great creativity and imagination. A recent "Tables for Two" in The New Yorker mused about the jovial bartender "in suspenders and a page-boy cap, who was moonlighting as a sommelier, fromagier, sous-chef, and meat slicer."
That's the half of it. At first I too thought that he was slicing bread and cheese and finishing the small plates. But I was now seated in front of him, having been whisked to the bar when a seat opened up. I soon worked out that the cold storage for food was under the back bar behind him, and that a tiny oven, with a hot plate on top, was next to his right hip. I asked.
"All the food goes through me," he replied. And so it did. He was quick to disclaim credit for the food of course. Chef Jody Williams was stationed at the other end of the bar, doing supervisory things. Putting out breakfast, lunch and dinner from this miniature station is an exercise worthy of admiration. But how about the food, anyway?
I dived into a fine-looking list of charcuterie, and over-meated myself. Rabbit was potted and served with a stack of country bread. I believe ceps were mentioned on the menu, but they weren't as noticeable as the rabbit, which was rough and hearty.
There were excellent, well-seasoned duck rillettes too (a special, I think; or perhaps the list changes regularly). More crunchy toast, and a heap of large caper berries with the cornichons. Buvette has pickles. I don't know what would have happened if I'd eaten all the capers I was offered during the course of this meal.
Consciously overdoing the meat, I ordered the oxtail marmalade tartine too. The oxtail is slow-cooked with orange (and lemon?) rinds, and comes as a rich, sweet, heaped mash on the toast. Have a caper?
Cassoulet emerged from the tiny oven dangerously hot. I had already scattered crumbs of meat and bits of toast around the bar while trying to keep my terrines on their small serving plates. Capers had gone bouncily AWOL. As for the shells of the nuts, I had graveled the bar's surface with them.
The cassoulet was truly tricky.
Beans there were, but it was hard to hunt them down with a duck leg and a hunk of garlicky sausage topping the bowl. I thought of snatching a small plate and moving my meats to it, but I settled for balancing them precariously on the bowl's rim while I explored the bottom half of the dish.
I fuss about cassoulet because I make it myself, and make it pretty well. This was a good one, but my own preference is for a drier dish. The beans were properly cooked - the basic requirement, which New York cassoulets have been known to fail - but they are in a broth beneath the meats. A tasty enough broth, but I don't like my cassoulets soupy. The proportion of meat to beans is over-generous too, but there just isn't room for more beans in the bowl.
Good, crisped duck confit, a convincing sausage (not a bit of kielbasa or whatever they could find). Carrots and tomatoes in the mix too. Messy but enjoyable. The alternative was coq au vin, which looked fine in a mahogany brown sort of way. Tripe and pork rotate in and out of the hot meat section of the menu.
The best wines to choose are French country wines - they have a perfectly appropriateBeaujolais-Villages. Cheeeses and hams are available; eggs and pastries at other times of day.
It's a nice operation and fairly priced. Go along and remember to keep your elbows in while eating.
The blog is lively, but information is hard to find.
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