Gray and Grizzled Food Fan

Like a heather flecked three season Harris tweed, Daniel Boulud’s Bowery menu makes fatty meat look good nearly all year round, a rare feat for the beer and sausage trade, which is at best usually a one season affair.  Below are a few highlights of recent visits.

1. Boudin blanc: As elegant as intestine wrapped innards can possibly be. Artful swirls of potato purée and and pair of braised apples turned a single link into a singular dish. Some well traveled microgreens added the obligatory color complement.

2. Foie gras in the boudin blanc: Foie gras taste and texture are distinct and complementary to the rest of the sausage. In some ways a better combination than the db Bistro Moderne foie and short rib burger. Fat flavor spectrum never goes greasy or gross.

3. Niçoise salad: Light tasting and beautifully glistening little sardines. A lively olive oil and good poached tuna. Throw in a scattering of olives and a few grape tomatoes, and it’s easy to forget the season or the street on which you’re eating this little number.

4. Good bread and great butter: Hearty bread perfect for sopping and a sea salt sprinkled butter that would fit in at Eleven Madison Park. A great high low combo. Freebies this good are a clear trickle down benefit of eating on the outposts of an empire.

5. Alevras in the House: When top chefs like Colin Alevras run a restaurant’s beverage program, good things happen. Places like Blind Tiger Ale House do a nice job of matching food to beer, but DBGB does a better job matching beer to food. I’d rather drink like a chef than eat like a bartender. In any case, DBGB’s wonderful beer list is affordable, never upsold and always worth exploring. They nail the little details of bar service as well: Lovely but not overdelicate glassware, nice crushed ice in the water glasses, and a deft hand with the refills.

6. Madcap mint sundae: A delicious dessert with a willfully unnatural looking gross out green color scheme. This ice cream confection makes sweet mockery of the loco locavore seasonality at all costs crowd. On the other hand, it is also far more natural than it appears. Hershey’s Kiss shaped meringue bites are Dayglo bright but made of local egg whites; whipped cream was Redi-Whip shaped but made from some hefty and tasty high fat high test cowjuice.

7. Impeccable Service: All the runners, floor managers and wine folks were fast and friendly. Better than any individual server was the coordination of the team. No Steve Hanson style scripted robotics and no Eric Ripert staffing overload.  In sum, warm well orchestrated front of house takes the chill off DBGB’s neo-Brutalist concrete jungle interior.

This entry was posted on February 9, 2010 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.