It took nearly forever for American restaurants to understand what American customers want, but now they have it right. We yearn for restaurants that are like us: casual, kindhearted, original, and a little too loud. The food doesn’t have to be American, the setting doesn’t have to be stylish, and the waiters can put on whatever they want, even the T-shirt they wore the night before. All we ask is that the chef exhibit a little inspiration and the owner understand that customers can’t have a good time without great service. These days, American spirit has triumphed over European tradition. The twelve restaurants redefining fine dining are aware of what we want in a perfect night out.
Fine dining, once the purview of the prosperous, has become a democratic institution. The beneficiaries of this culinary repositioning are customers who don’t mind standing in line in the slim hopes of snagging a table at Little Serow in Washington, D.C. (boy, do they wait), and those willing to sit on benches, stools, and the extraordinarily hard chairs at Central Kitchen in San Francisco (cushions are so 2005). Even our culinary combinations have been updated. Deviled eggs with domestic draft beer is the food-and-beverage pairing of 2013. Peculiarities have become part of the fun.
Much that we used to cherish is now superfluous: Waiters are unchained from the shackles of obsequiousness. What’s required from them are intelligence, knowledge, and conversational skill, although I never want a waiter who recites a list of the entrées he likes best. Food is plated differently these days. Less often will you come upon meat, potato, and vegetable all together, neatly arranged, occupying the same plate. Menu items are offered as snacks, small plates, large plates, larger plates, and sometimes no plates at all—cutting boards have become chic.
Vegetables are thriving. They’re no longer thought of as secondary to the magnificence of meat. They get equal billing, sometimes the entire marquee. Never have they seemed so visionary as at Vedge, a vegan restaurant in Philadelphia.
For me, one element of dining has not changed: Food remains central to an unforgettable evening. The goodness of wonderful cuisine radiates outward, causing ripples, like a stone dropped into a pond. For you, it might start with something else—a particular wine, a collection of old pals, a woman you have been trying hard to impress. Last year meals in tiny, unusual restaurants matched and usually exceeded those in conventional dining venues. Small spots got better, a new breed of restaurant unbound.
The twelve restaurants on _GQ’_s list of places to go for a perfect night out will make you feel coddled, welcome, and well fed. You can’t ask for more than that.
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| Washington, D.C. •Transformative Thai
A fried egg over ground duck at Little Serow.
I don’t enjoy lining up for ninety minutes, required to get a table on a Saturday night. I don’t ordinarily seek out restaurants located belowground, in this case in a former Dunkin’ Donuts. (For that matter, I don’t like Dunkin’ Donuts.)
Here’s another confession: I don’t particularly appreciate Thai cuisine.
Little Serow is the creation of Johnny Monis, whose four-star Komi stunned Washington years ago. Little Serow, much less ceremonial, seats twenty-eight, including eight at a counter. By the time it opened on that Saturday night, I stood at the front of a line numbering seventy-nine.
Little Serow is kind of ugly, too.
It’s cinder blocks and poured cement, a tin roof, aqua walls. The music is country and western, and the staff is patient. No, it’s better than that. It’s fabulous. You’ll be briefed on the prix fi menu of northern Thai cuisine and told which wines best pair up with food that is often so spicy it can obliterate weak-willed beverages. By the time I got through charcoal-grilled eggplant that had soaked up a lake of chile-saturated dressing, I questioned the likelihood of surviving the meal.
I had the best Brussels sprouts I’ve eaten in the brief time chefs have learned to cherish them. These were whole and enhanced with palm sugar and tamarind. (Does sticky, sour tamarind adhere to and improve every vegetable?) The finale was marinated pork ribs on the bone, as gentle as can be.
Little Serow is transformational. The preparations are exquisitely focused. The spicing ascends and then descends, as harmoniously as musical scales. This was my finest eating experience of 2012.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
Perucchi Gran Reserva, a sweet, cooling Spanish red vermouth
- laap Chiang Mai, a salty, spicy minced-pork salad
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Memphis •Italian-American Veers South
Hog Hominy’s Prewitt pizza.
"The scrapple," said the young waiter at Hog Hominy, describing a special of the day, "is a kind of northern, Yankee-style dish."
"Son," I replied, "scrapple is a Philadelphia dish, and I’m from Philadelphia. You southerners shouldn’t bother trying to get it right."
In truth, scrapple is a mash of pig parts and flour, formed into a rectangular shape and pan-fried. The version served here was less squishy and more porky than most. It was somewhat sweet, too, a predictable southern touch.
Scrapple sure wasn’t what I expected at a Southern-Italian restaurant. I don’t mean Southern Italian, as in the cuisine of Campania. I mean Southern and Italian, an all-new, totally delightful fusion cuisine. Restaurants are rarely this original or this much fun.
Outside the building was something I took to be a miniature drag strip, this being the South. It was a bocce court. Inside, the room was bright, simple, and cheerful. The waiters looked fresh out of school, the music at lunch was ’50s rock, the tables were blond, the chairs yellow, and the food an unceasingly fascinating style of cooking that seems not to have existed until Hog Hominy came along. The creamed corn was more crispy than creamy, and it was cheesy, too. Sweetbreads were supple inside, crusty outside, served with both a vinaigrette and a sweet-and-spicy sauce. Romaine salad included the best use of a 2012 staple—crackling chicken skin—I came across all year.
The pizza toppings can be simple and traditional, or they can be like nothing you’ve seen before. Our waiter recommended the Prewitt, a pizza with Fontina, tomato sauce, boudin, and a glaze of scrambled eggs. I was mesmerized by that loose-textured housemade boudin.
Peanut-butter pie goes for $5 and is very Elvis, with nearly an inch of mushy banana filling, another inch of peanut-butter crème, and a pile of whipped cream, all on a cookie crust. I figured I’d try one bite, but I couldn’t stop. One slice and my sequined jumpsuit no longer fit.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
_Pappy Van Winkle’s _fifteen-year-old bourbon
- pumpkin-pecan pie
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Philadelphia •Amazing Vegan. (Yes, Vegan!)
The bar at Vedge.
I’ve dined in more vegan restaurants that I can recall, always for professional reasons and always in despair. I’ve never had a vegan meal I more than tolerated until I walked warily into Vedge, located in a spiffy burnished town house in Center City.
"Looks very meat-and-potatoes," I said to the maître d’ with my customary joviality.
"Not to me," the host snapped, as humorless as, well, vegans always are.
After that, my dining experience didn’t merely get better. It got great. The food and service traveled to a dimension in the culinary world where veganism has never been and where vegetables in general rarely go. Our table was large and comfortable. The staff was friendly and efficient—I dropped a fork and it was instantly replaced.
The cooking strutted past tolerable to remarkable. I had no idea so much flavor could be delivered without butter, cream, milk, eggs, and other kitchen staples. Chef Richard Landau’s staff must include a benevolent gremlin or a fairy godmother who sprinkles magic dust over the pots and the pans. I had trouble understanding how vegan food had advanced this far and this fast without an accompanying outpouring of acclaim.
Vedge pairs smoked tofu with golden
beets and rye.
Every dish tasted better than I expected it would. Fingerling potatoes with a creamy—no cream, of course—Worcestershire sauce were intense, an attribute of most Vedge dishes. Beets arrived in a ring mold, an example of French classicism without the butter and cream that emplifies French extravagance. Crisp celery-root fritters lacked nothing, while squash pierogi were more delicate than pierogi ever get. All the dishes had extraordinary balance and savoriness. Nothing was absent from this meal, and let’s not forget that meat and fish weren’t present.
The customers looked, I have to say, like regular folks. None of the men were pale and languid. None of the women wore a belt made from a garden hose. On the way out, I passed a woman coming in sporting calf-high shearling boots. Nobody showed a hint of displeasure, including the previously brusque maître d’.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2011 Clos du Tue-Boeuf Touraine Le Brin de Chèvre, a light, grassy French white
- roasted maitake mushrooms, celery-root fritter, and smoked- leek rémoulade
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Asheville, NC •A New Spanish Revolution
Crate’s Spanish potato omelet.
Crate is a prototype of how genuine tapas—the kind from Spain—might flourish throughout America. It’s that accessible, and it’s so appealing that the restaurant is packed day and night. Nothing here seems odd or incomprehensible, including the bocata de calamares, which is a fried-squid sandwich. The squid rings are engaging, soft inside and crunchy outside. The olive-oil mayonnaise is light, delicate, barely there, much like the cape of a matador brushing the nose of a bull. Want fries with that? The patatas bravas are topped with squiggles of a tomato-based Spanish sauce that challenges ketchup as the ideal match for fried spuds.
A variation on the famous potato omelet of Spain is prepared individually and served hot. It resembles a personal pan pizza. (I always beg tapas restaurants in Spain to serve my tortilla de patatas hot instead of at room temperature. They never listen, of course.) The chicken croquetas, small, rounded fritters that too seldom taste of chicken, deliver the punch of a chicken pot pie. Spinach sautéed with apples, raisins, and toasted pine nuts is impossible to resist when prepared this way.
The dining room at Crate.
Crate also has a sensational Spanish wine list that includes nearly unattainable classics as well as reasonably priced wines by the glass, starting at $6. Yes, $6.
Among the specialties are several versions of meat from the famed black Ibérico pigs of Spain, including the pricey and precious cured jamón ibérico de bellota. These particular pigs don’t roam the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Asheville is located. Lucky for them. Around here, they’d be barbecued and served on a hamburger roll.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2010 Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas Albariño Rías Baixas, one of Spain’s most profound whites
- jamón ibérico de bellota, the world’s most prized ham
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Houston •Spectacular Sushi
Duck served in a jar at Uchi.
Uchi might be the only restaurant I know where not securing a reservation is a plus. I arrived very early, which guaranteed me a seat at the brightly lit and inexplicably friendly sushi bar.
A server waiting inside the door presented a tray of complimentary appetizers, on this day a miniature avocado-and-sun-dried-tomato roll. Thank you so much. As soon as I sat down, out came another gift, a minute bowl of pickled-plum sorbet. Even more of a treat was the array of early-bird-menu items, offered at a fraction of the regular price.
Start with kakiage, a tempura tangle of vegetable strips. On this night it consisted of potatoes and onions, $3. Does it take a New Yorker to unearth such a bargain? My sushi guy said, "Ninety-nine percent of our customers have it." Houston is becoming the most electrifying food destination in America, so I’m not surprised that customers are well-informed.
An off-menu flight of fancy at Uchi.
The baby yellowtail with ponzu, Thai chiles, and orange slices is so exquisite, so balanced, your eyes might roll back in your head. I credit Nobu Matsuhisa for introducing America to raw fish and chiles, maybe raw fish and ponzu, too. But fish and fruit? To my knowledge the Uchi restaurants—the group originated in Austin and now numbers three—came up with the idea. The dish is silky, sweet, tart, and even a little salty, an all-time great. If you’ve been bored by sashimi, you won’t be here.
Ahead of you are irresistible possibilities—smoky, curried, garlicky, and grilled. All are superb, with the exception of a clunky tempura roll called Shag that my sushi guy said was an homage to Austin Powers. I have no idea why I ordered it. I didn’t even like the films.
My brilliant and perceptive sushi chef handed over a combo of octopus, sea urchin, and scallop. He told me to eat it all at once. I did. What an invention: triple-decker sashimi. This is some restaurant, one Shag short of sensational.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2010 Patz Hall Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, an overachieving, sumptuous red
- Texas quail marinated in coconut milk, shrimp paste, and curry oil
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Cambridge, MA •French Cuisine Gets Smahter
Bartender Mike Fleming at West Bridge.
West Bridge, named for the old West Boston Bridge that once linked Boston and Cambridge, is located in the Kendall Square section of Cambridge, at one time the home of MIT and little else of significance. These days Kendall Square has become a brain-numbing center of high-tech, high-minded, and possibly high-explosive companies capable of either saving the world or blowing it up. If you think the way I do, you know which is more likely.
Within that morass of man-made monoliths stands West Bridge, which looks like a cross between an Ikea and a casual college dining hall. It’s both a restaurant and a refuge, a jumble of slouching students, oddball decorative touches (is that really rope wrapped around the chandeliers?), coats strewn across unoccupied spaces, and, unexpectedly, pristine food and drink. Nothing is low-key about the kitchen or the cocktails. I ordered a Love and Fear, a meticulously assembled gin-and-Aperol-based drink that nicely summed up the gestalt of the neighborhood.
The food is a little French but mostly from the imagination of chef Matthew Gaudet. Mussels came in a broth loaded with pure, buttery uni essence, trapping the scent of the sea. Egg in a Jar was a tiny tower of food, including a duck egg, potato puree, and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. I loved everything liquid at West Bridge, including a honey-and-thyme vinaigrette and a chowder with clams and smoked pork. By the time my friend and I departed, thoroughly pleased, she decided it was "the best damn college bar I ever went to."
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2010 François Chidaine Vouvray Les Argiles, a crisp and luscious French white
- black-Tuscan-kale-and-duck-confit salad
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Houston •Texas without The Brisket
Oxheart’s raw "Amish" snap peas.
The aged building that houses Oxheart looks to me like an annex of the Alamo. Its lovely but battered front door appears to have withstood assaults from sworn enemies trying to kick it in. Or maybe it was frustrated locals, desperate to get in. Tables are that impossible to book.
This thirty-seat spot is not a vegetarian restaurant, but the contributions of seafood (snapper steamed to softness) and fowl (guinea hen poached to pliability) were so nominal that what I mostly remember is the dominance of the vegetable kingdom. Out came a soaring succession of sunflower seeds, citrus fruits, grated roots, and borage, an herb previously employed primarily as an acne cure. Vegetables aren’t a side dish and are never insignificant when Justin Yu cooks.
My ridiculously reasonable $49 tasting menu started with sunflower-seed soup containing "burnt onions" and topped with puffed grains and puffed rice. The rustic, pungent liquid was an acquired taste, but one I acquired before the bowl was empty. I felt even more passionate about his slices of pumpkin prepared with vadouvan (an Indian-French spice blend that no aspiring young chef can be without), hibiscus, and that borage, here braised and impossibly delicious. Yu is a mastermind of madcap vegetation.
The counter is made from wood reclaimed from nineteenth-century houses, and built-in drawers allow you to help yourself to utensils. Yu’s wife, Karen Man, is the pastry chef, and while her desserts sound simple—grapefruit with frozen yogurt, a Meyer-lemon tart—they are prepared with such elegance and precision I thought them profound. There’s a sommelier, an astonishing luxury at a restaurant this small. If you love vegetables and pastries, this is a meal not to miss.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2003 R. López de Heredia Viña Gravonia, a slightly oxidized, very nutty, full-bodied Spanish white
- warm sunflower-seed soup
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| San Francisco •California’s New Champ
At Central Kitchen, hen-liver mousse in a
mulled-wine gelée.
The food is by Thomas McNaughton, who proved himself a pasta savant at his wonderful Flour + Water, located a few blocks away. With the ascension of Central Kitchen, the gifted and obsessive McNaughton moves up in the ranks of America’s least recognized great young chefs.
Central Kitchen is his contribution to the still vague but nevertheless storied concept of California cuisine, which got under way more than thirty years ago with such dishes as Wolfgang Puck’s Chinese chicken salad. More significantly, Central Kitchen demonstrates the range of McNaughton’s modern haute cuisine.
His composed plates have so many ingredients I couldn’t keep track of them all. My cauliflower amuse-bouche seemed to have dozens of elements—pureed, fermented, pickled, and whatever else a kitchen can do. It looked like a tiny potato and was gone in a gulp. Much simpler but just as satisfying are a plump marinated mussel; shiny radishes with cultured butter and salt; and hen mousse with pickled mustard seeds. Have you had roasted beets perfumed with brown butter? If not, you’re missing something.
The lobster came with persimmons and an avocado-and-parsnip puree, a blanket of sweet tastes over the lush crustacean meat. Some dishes aren’t quite what they’re called. Sturgeon, Celery, Matsutake wasn’t considered a soup, but with so many moist ingredients, it appeared to be one. Cod also had brown butter, lots of it, a discernible sauce. I wondered why all cod isn’t prepared this way.
The room is decidedly eccentric. An ornamental touch immediately inside the front door is an oversize water-department pipe filling a small pool. It’s yet another step forward in the brave new world of rustic decor meets glossy cuisine. Chairs are rock hard. The ceiling is raw wood and the floor is concrete, although particularly nice concrete. The noise level, mostly from rock ’n’ roll, is way too high unless you live in New York, in which case it’s average.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2010 Dnnhoff Estate Riesling, a crisp, fresh, well-balanced German white
- roasted beets, fromage blanc, and rye crumble
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Los Angeles •L.A. on the Mediterranean
The bar at Bäco Mercat.
Photo: Dylan + Jeni
In Los Angeles, which is becoming the shared-plate capital of America, no restaurant carries out the concept as imaginatively and flawlessly as Bäco Mercat. Give chef Josef Centeno a few square inches for plating and something startling appears, a mesmerizing amalgam of influences that seem based in America but travel worldwide.
The pan-seared rib eye at Bäco Mercat.
Photo: Peden+Munk
Bäco Mercat is named for Centeno’s "bäco," which is a flatbread sandwich. He invented it. He’s proud of it. Each version is undeniably tasty, and his signature bäco wrapper reminds me of the flour tortillas made by hand in Tex-Mex spots throughout San Antonio. Other dishes on the menu thrilled me more, but the customers were transfid by everything. They were remarkably quiet, spellbound by the food. Here’s something else that startled me: Hair of the Dog, a beer from Portland, almost impossible to obtain. I’d never seen it in a restaurant.
The first dish to stun me was Abkhazian-chile-spiced hamachi crudo with avocado and, of all things, a crisp potato pancake. The hamachi was stellar and the potato pancake better than any I’ve eaten in any of the Jewish delicatessens throughout L.A. This was Jean-Georges Vongerichten meets Barney Greengrass. Geoduck was cooked a la plancha, with a small bowl of luscious chowder on the side. Pork di testa, which is fatty, came in olive oil, which is also fatty. It sounds excessive but somehow was not.
The housemade sweet-and-sour sodas
at Bäco Mercat.
Photo: Dylan + Jeni
The four of us at my table decided Centeno’s food was a little Spanish, a little Basque, a little Moroccan, and a little Mediterranean. Or maybe Maghreb would better sum it up. The desserts, prepared by the chef, are precisely what you usually get when chefs move into the pastry department: singular in style. Here every one of them is supremely creamy, with the texture of banana-cream pie. In fact, I recommend the banana-cream-pie rice pudding.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
Hair of the Dog "Adam" Hearty Old World Ale, dark, sweet, and smoky
- warm eggplant salad and cucumbers (really slightly sour pickles)
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Brooklyn •The Steak House Rebooted
Grilled sardines at St. Anselm.
You won’t think of St. Anselm as perfect, not right away. You won’t even recognize it as a steak house. It doesn’t resemble those massive old-time New York eating emporiums that now specialize in tough New York prime sirloins, fresh-frozen creamed spinach, and irritable waiters as bored with the menus as you should be.
St. Anselm’s signature steak is the hanger—plenty garlicky, a little too salty, considerably chewy, and priced at fifteen bucks. It’s the kind of meat you might come across at an undersized Paris bistro, which St. Anselm rather resembles, both in looks and in spirit. The wine list, American- and French-oriented, is extensive and fantastic. There’s an open kitchen, brick walls, and dangerous-looking lights resembling circular saws hovering over the bar. Here you’ll see women from the neighborhood, good-looking ones, sitting alone, eating happily. This makes it the sexiest steak house I know, actually the only sexy steak house I know.
More than a steak house or a bistro, St. Anselm is a Brooklyn restaurant, filled with independence, quiet sophistication, beautifully ecuted simplicity, and a touch of quirkiness. I asked our waiter if absolutely every menu item was grilled, and he replied, "Except the spinach." The avocado-and-shrimp salad comes with grill marks.
If you wish a near classic meat-and-potatoes experience, order the strip steak—thick, beefy, and practically prime, priced at an astounding $25. The spinach gratin, nice and cheesy, goes for $6, as do the pan-fried mashed potatoes that come with truffle oil (but are better without it). For dessert there’s a Meyer-lemon cheesecake, another six bucks. This might be America’s greatest beef-centric bargain, and it’s situated in high-rent Williamsburg.
I had a special of salmon collar one day, which gave me more pleasure than most steaks do. It was oversize, fantastically fatty, and extravagantly pleasurable. Those are precisely the joys we seek from a traditional steak-house meal.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2010 M. Chapoutier Côtes du Roussillon Villages Domaine de Bila-Haut Occultum Lapidem, a potent, plummy red
- a "butcher’s steak," the hanger cut lavished with garlic butter
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Charleston, SC •High Times in Low Country
Barbecued white shrimp at The Ordinary.
You might be fooled. The Ordinary looks like a raw bar, acts like a raw bar, pretends to be a raw bar. Enter in midafternoon and you get fresh local oysters, better local shrimp, and spectacular cold lump crabmeat with bagnarotte sauce, a sort of rémoulade with a French accent.
The room puzzled me at first. The Ordinary seemed too big, too towering, too hollow, yet another valiant try at filling the excessive emptiness of an abandoned bank building with a restaurant. Then the people started showing up, initially the raw-bar crowd. I began to feel at home, so friendly was everyone, so easygoing the atmosphere. The customers didn’t look or dress alike, but they all seemed to know one another. It’s the French-brasserie concept idealized, everyone happily jostling everyone else. If you hang around for a night or two, it’s likely you’ll be warmly jostled, too.
By now you might think you’ve gotten all you can out of this restaurant. You’ve just begun. What awaits are Mike Lata’s intelligently conceived and exquisitely ecuted seafood creations. On a whim, I ordered triggerfish schnitzel with sunchokes and brown-butter vinaigrette. (Triggerfish is obscure, schnitzels are dry, sunchokes are silly, and I may be the only living diner who adores brown butter.) The dish was startling, not merely for the succulence of the breaded and fried fish but also for those sunchokes. They were deliberately overcooked, transformed into little beanbags of soft, creamy flavor. Prepare them this way and sunchokes will become in 2013 what Brussels sprouts were to 2012, a revelation.
The fish is expertly cooked, which means never too long. The chunks of wahoo in the New England fish chowder were probably in the broth for five minutes. Lobster in a ceviche was marinated for no time at all, which is why it’s called "minute ceviche." The customers make the room here, but once I got into the food, I forgot they were there.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
NV Jo Landron Atmosphères, a juicy, eccentric, lip-smacking sparkler
- barbecued heads-on shrimp immersed in a mostly Worcestershire sauce
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
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| Brooklyn •Spain Like You’ve Never Tasted It
Photos: Cody Swanson
La Vara doesn’t feel romantic, except on a warm night when you might enjoy sitting outside on the tree-lined Cobble Hill street, waiting for your table. It doesn’t look particularly romantic, either, unless brick walls make your heart skip. But Spanish cuisine always seems a little dreamy, and here you can try dish after dish of food that’s vaguely familiar but not quite like anything you’ve had before. It’s ideal for a first date. Your partner will think he or she has been taken to another part of the world.
Even better, when the magnificent, fresh, bright red Spanish prawns in a preserved-lemon sauce come to the table, reenact the legendary eating scene from the film Tom Jones. Suck on the heads. Slurp a little. Gaze seductively. You’ll crave each other, unless of course you’d rather have another order of prawns.
La Vara isn’t accidentally exotic. The cuisine, by Alex Raij and Eder Montero, best known in New York for tapas, is a mélange of the Jewish and Muslim cooking that once thrived in what was a very Christian Spain.
Not all the dishes are quixotic. You’ve had red-wine sangria before, although the version here seems unusual, more like a well-crafted cocktail. Within the croquetas are tiny teases of ham. Sardines are cured in olive oil and accompanied by soothing strips of sweet pickled red and green peppers. You might never have had batons of fried eggplant to dip into cheese sauce. They’re the healthy Spanish equivalent of mozzarella sticks.
Be daring. Order the pasta with goat butter and ground goat. The pasta is almost as tender as gnocchi, and the goat ingredients are unusually mild, absolutely easy to eat. Suckling pig, a special one night, came on the bone, the meat sweet and the skin crunchy. The bay-leaf-and-lemon ice cream included a surprise, young Spanish walnuts soaked in sugar. The wet walnuts on the sundaes of my childhood were never this irresistible.
La Vara is pleasurable and gentle, to me Raij and Montero at their most heartfelt and personal. I particularly loved the tiny window in the kitchen wall where dishes are passed out to servers. It’s not an open kitchen. It’s merely a kitchen opening.
A Drink and Dish Not to Miss
2010 Viña Mein Ribeiro, a deceptively light, atypically flavorful Spanish white
- fried artichokes to dip into creamy, supercharged anchovy alioli
Little Serow • Hog & Hominy • Vedge • Curate • Uchi • West Bridge • Oxheart
Central Kitchen • Baco Mercat • St. Anselm • The Ordinary • La Vara
