Back Forty 190 Avenue B (@ 12th Street), New York, NY
For my birthday, we went to the Back Forty for dinner on a post-World Cup Saturday night. Since they don't take reservations, we told our party of 6 to show up around 7:30pm, hoping to beat the post-8pm rush. When we got there, it was surprisingly already pretty crowded and full of children, which I found slight annoying. But luckily, they were able to seat all of us in the backyard garden (which is where I secretly wanted to sit all along) within 20-25 mins. We sat in this nice communal picnic table in the back and while I generally hate communal tables b/c you're all up in everyone else's business, this one was big enough that we weren't completely on top of our neighbor's conversations. The menu has a lot more yummy sounding appetizers and starters than main course. Many of us got a bunch of different apps to start. Aarti and I got the cold pea soup ($9)...it was exactly how it sounded and even though it clearly said it was a COLD soup, I was weirded out that it was totally cold. But I thought it was pretty good, although Aarti had mentioned that she thought it was a bit too salty for her. Next, Dan and I shared the Pork Jowl Nuggets ($4), which for me was the most disappointing part of the meal. It was 3 tiny pieces and it seemed to be more breaded/fried stuff than actual pork. The pork nuggets at Char. 4 is much meatier and juicier but just as deep fried. The other apps on the table were the grilled asparagus ($10), mushroom croquettes ($9) which I thought were really really delicious, and Virginia got the Butterhead Lettuce Salad ($9), which was surprisingly also really tasty. The salad was huge and dressed perfectly with a white balsamic dressing. For main dishes, I got the poached cod ($20), which was cooked perfectly (very flaky) and it was a pretty hefty piece of cod. Dan got the lamb sausage ($18) which came with 2 large pieces of sausage on a bed of chickpea ragout. I had 1 bite of it and it was good but I think eating two of them would have been too much. Aarti and Lav both got the Japanese Eggplant ($18) which was the only vegetarian entree, but there were a lot of veggie side dish items that you could pair together to make an adequate meal. Virginia got the swiss chard gratin ($9), which she said was delicious and the special pork terrine...I've never seen or heard of this type of dish before but it basically looked like a large square piece of pork mashed up with some other stuff served with a rye-looking bread. Will got the grass-fed burger with cheese and bacon and fries ($11), which looked super tasty especially the fries. Lav also made a game time order of onion rings ($6) which were lightly battered and not too greasy and served with a really tasty paprika mayo. The one down side of sitting outside was the fact that many of us were getting bitten by bugs while we were outside. So that was starting to get really annoying b/c I was starting to focus on my bug bites and not my food. Of course, no birthday meal would be complete without dessert. I must say that the dessert was the best part of the meal. We ordered 2 chocolate bread puddings with vanilla ice cream ($7 each), 1 cheesecake (that was the special of the night), and 2 root beer floats ($7 each). One would think that the bread pudding would be the crowd pleaser but it was actually the cheesecake. It wasn't really firm or hard, it was almost kind of melty in texture, but it just worked really well with the fresh strawberries and crust. The root beer floats were a nice retro touch but personally I think we could have gotten away with just 1 of them. I liked the bread pudding although it didn't seem like the everyone was overly impressed with it.
Total cost of the meal (with everyone paying for my portion, thanks!!) + tip and tax: $62/pp. Not too bad for a large variety of drinks, apps, entrees and desserts. I think this place is the type of restaurant that has a rotating type of menu based on what's fresh and in season, so I would definitely try it out again.
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