My gf and I were lucky enough to get a reservation Friday night at Jean-Georges ABC Kitchen (abckitchennyc.com). So we met up with reno expat for dinner before grabbing yet another 2p2er (myrmidon7328) and heading to Caroline's to see Steve Rannazzisi (of FX's
The League fame). ABC Kitchen uses as much organic, locally-sourced food as possible. The meats, veggies, even the dairy is all from local farms. It's a neat proof of concept: high end restaurant, James Beard award winner, uses all locally sourced and organic ingredients and keeps it (NYC-)affordable. Anyhow, quick dinner review:
Drinks: I tried the Peak Organic Winter Session Ale (draft) and followed it up with the Southampton Double White (bottle). I thought both were very good, with a slight (personal) edge to the Peak, because I find lemony notes somewhat off-putting in a witbier (though I recognize that some may love the lemon, and this is just my preference, nothing wrong with the beer). YMMV. GF had the Sancerre, which I tasted, and would highly recommend. Reno had a bourbon and cider combo, which he seemed to enjoy as well.
Apps: We shared the crab toast and the diver scallops. The diver scallops were raw and sliced thin, served with lime, chili, and pistachio. The lime was strong, and this came out almost feeling like a ceviche. For $16, I was expecting more I guess than basically one scallop sliced in 7 slices, but the lime-chili combo there was really good. The crab toast was fantastic. Thick-sliced (sourdough, I believe) toast served with lump crabmeat and a lemon-garlic aioli. This is absolutely something I will try to reproduce. It was delicious.
Entrees: Reno got the snapper, served with herbs, chilies, and spinach. I tasted this, and the fish was cooked perfectly. In fact, everything we got was cooked perfectly. The dill really came through in this dish, so if you're not a dill fan, you definitely want to steer clear. Otherwise I thought it was a very nice dish, but I am biased toward snapper. I had the roast suckling pig with bacon marmalade. I'm going to say that again. Bacon. Marmalade. This was delicious. It was like a little brick of pork (apparently they roast the pig whole, then carve it up and make this little brick o' pork) topped with some super crispy skin, topped with bacon marmalade, served with braised turnips. The pork was nice and sweet and smoky. My only complaint was that -- as someone who cooks a lot at home -- I didn't feel like this brought much to the table that I couldn't do at home. On the flip side, these type of meals are always inspirational -- I'll for sure be trying to concoct my own bacon marmalade now. And as usual, my gf got the tastiest dish of the evening: fried chicken with collard greens and hot sauce butter. Yes, hot sauce butter. This was a giant breast of chicken, lightly fried in what seemed like panko (by the way, the skin was still on the chicken breast under the panko). It was basically perfect fried chicken. The hot sauce butter got into the collard greens, which gave them that nice little kick that collards ought to have. Just incredible; I highly recommend it.
Dessert: Gluttons that we are, and knowing that we had a 32 block trek up to Caroline's to work off all the calories anyway (
) we ordered the doughnut platter (incidentally, it's near impossible to not order these after they parade you by the case that plays home to the doughnuts on the way to your table) and the salted caramel ice cream sundae. The doughnuts were light and fluffy, not too sweet. The dough was almost a little bready. There was a strawberry-iced one, a chocolate-iced one, and a jelly-filled sugar-coated one. The jelly was great, and then the chocolate-iced one (which tasted like a really nice Boston cream with no cream -- man I just kept waiting for the cream in the middle, but no dice
Boston creams are my favorite) was good, and the strawberry-iced ones were fine but not exciting. If you are able, I'd pass on the doughnuts. They are good, but as a whole not exciting. However, you would be wildly remiss to not try the sundae. Three scoops of salted caramel ice cream (which is
really good), peanuts, kettle corn, dark chocolate sauce, whipped cream. This is easily one of the best ice cream dishes I've ever had.
Service was very good. One of the bartenders was a little less than friendly (we arrived a little early and had a drink before dinner), but the others were very nice. Our waitress was good; she was very friendly and stayed on top of things but was not oppressive at all. The water fillers were -- shall we say -- ambitious, especially since the water glasses were small. Our water didn't get below half full for basically the entire meal. But that's better that than sitting there looking around for water for half the meal.
All in all, it was a really nice meal, and I would to recommend it to anyone.