You may have noticed the lack of recipe posting in the latest posts. Well, that is because I am doing my darndest to eat my way through NYC…literally. We just did a walking food tour of the LES through The Big Onion (highly recommend) and we enjoyed eating our way through Red Hook during The Red Hook Immersion put on by Brooklyn Based. So you will have to bear with me…I do have many a tasty recipe to share with you but I feel like I need to first get through all the restaurants I’ve been visiting. This is all for you of course, to help you choose where on earth you should eat in a city FILLED with so many delicious food options. So let’s get back to business.
I had the pleasure of meeting Katherine for a wonderful rainy run around lower Manhattan. With constant chatter, the miles flew by and we actually didn’t even mind the rain that much. We also had brunch with Annie at Prune to look forward to, so the promise of their famous bloody mary’s and delicious brunch dishes also helped! Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune and author of the best-selling novel Blood Bones & Butter, which chronicles her journey as a chef. After dining at Prune, I have now placed this book on my must read list.
Two classic bloody mary’s and a champagne with pear brandy
A 10am post run brunch is the perfect time for some booze, no? We had to try Prune’s famous bloody’s and I am so glad we did! Served with a shot glass of beer, they are fresh, spicy, briney and delicious. Katherine opted for the prune brandy champagne, also a nice way to start a Saturday morning! We ordered three different dishes to maximize our abilities to taste Prunes menu.
Dutch style pancake: One large pancake cooked in the oven with blueberries and sour cream. Served with Canadian bacon
Toasted caraway seed and sour cream omelette with a side of smoked salmon and potato rosti. Already cut and waiting to be shared. Yes, that is sour cream oozing out of the perfectly yellow omelette
Spicy stewed chickpeas: buttered crumbled eggs with spicy stewed chickpeas, preserved lemon, and warm flatbread
I think Katherine said it best, “it was less of a pancake, but more of a cake made in a pan.” But this cake, oh so good! Crispy outside and soft inside and so thick and dense. The omelette was perfectly fluffy and the sour cream and caraway was a surprisingly delicious combination. I wish I had time to try dinner at Prune, but alas, I definitely can not return to a restaurant as my last days in NY wind down. So it was on to a different type of boozy meal with dinner at Gwynnett St. in Williamsburg. Gwynnett St serves up modern American cuisine from a chef who used to work at WD-50, so think molecular gastronomy-esque.
Whiskey bread with cultured butter
This is a MUST ORDER at Gwynnett and where the boozy part of the meal comes in. Less like bread and more similar to a biscuit, the loaf of bread was warm and tender and left an aftertaste of whiskey that left you thinking and pondering that interesting flavor you don’t normally expect to taste in a loaf of bread. We decided to share a starter, two mains, and a dessert. Everything was plated very creatively and beautifully and we noticed the chef has a thing for only using half of a plate (you’ll see what I mean).
Spinach and chard, rhubarb and goat cheese. And no, we did not eat half the salad. This is the “plating on half of the plate” I was talking about
Sunflower tofu, artichokes, chicory, and moth beans
Sea scallops, fava beans, almonds, and stinging nettles
I love when a dish surprises you, and these dishes all did that. The menu reads more like a list of ingredients, with no hint as to how the dish is prepared or how the ingredients will be used. The most surprising was the tofu…made mostly of sunflower seeds it had a very creamy inside and crispy outside and was just, well, surprisingly delicious! However, the one bite I keep thinking about is dessert, where again, the menu did not give any hints as to what we could expect.
Coconut, malt, barley, pomegranate
So what was this exactly? A creamy and light coconut panna cotta with some sort of crunchy barley topping, coconut “snow” and pomegranate. To be honest, I’m still not exactly sure what I was eating but all I know was it was surprising and delicious. Nothing bad about that!
