DBGB Kitchen - Visited 12/21/09 3 Forks

DBGB Kitchen 299 Bowery, New York, NY 10003

Instead of buying each other x-mas gifts, Dan and I decided to just go to a nice dinner in the city. So I chose DBGB Kitchen - the latest Daniel Boulud restaurant in the east village. I was a bit nervous about eating there after reading several comments that the service was bad and the food too small. The only reservation I could get on Opentable was for 5:45pm. We arrived a few minutes late but the hostess did not seem to mind. The space is pretty cool; it's a very open layout with an industrial look to it. We started the meal with the Beef Bone Marrow ($13); it was a long piece of bone with the marrow garnished with onion, celery seed, rye toast with the crust cut off and watercress wrapped in pastrami. I've had bone marrow before (Dan hadn't) and I thought it was pretty good - as Dan said, it tasted like beef flavored jello. DBGB also has a great list of unusual beers - I started with a Six Point Black Wheat ($7) and Dan had a Six Point Oatmeal Stout ($7). Both quite tasty. For our main meal, I had the Frenchie Burger ($17), which consisted of pork belly and arugula on a burger with fries. Dan had the Piggie ($19), which had pulled pork and spicy mayo on a burger. I had read on Yelp that people complained that the burgers were too small - I actually thought it was the right amount of burger. Sometimes other places' burgers are too big and too much food. I thought this was the right amount. I thought the fries were just ok, nothing to write home about, but decent enough to go with the burger. I then ordered the Professor Fritz beer ($7), which is a light wheat beer with a shot of cassis. It was quite refreshing and delicious. Dan got the Engine Oil beer ($7), which was not really my cup of tea. Even though we were pretty full, we felt it was necessary to split a dessert to cap off the night. So we split a pear ice cream sandwich ($9), which had pear ice cream, cubed pear and hard sugar-like cookies. It was a nice finish to a pretty filling meal. Although now I've been home for a bit, I am really thirsty! It makes me wonder if the meal was too salty.