I'll admit that I would have never discovered this place on my own because of its east side location but I'm glad that Lav had mentioned it for dinner. Apparently the restaurant changes menus seasonally, so they change their name accordingly - so in a few months they'll call themselves Park Avenue Summer, although I'm not really sure why that matters. But in any case, my first impression of this place is that the decor is STUNNING. Really really beautiful - it almost felt like you were inside a botanical garden or something. Just as I was going to comment that it would be a great place for a wedding, I noticed that someone was having their wedding dinner on the private 2nd floor.
As I mentioned the menu changes seasonally but honestly I'm not really sure what makes this particular menu very "spring". My 2nd impression of this place was that it was pretty expensive, almost bordering on the line of offensively expensive - $15-18 for an appetizer and almost every entree was over $30. But I'm willing to roll with the punches and see what it's all about. I opted to get the rabbit wellington ($32) based on the waitres' drooling recommendation of it and Lav got the pea soup ($15) and small ricotta cavatelli ($17) without lamb and we got the leek gratin ($10) and rainbow carrots ($16) to start. They start you with this incredibly warm and delicious bread and then add on addictive salty herbed butter - I really couldn't stop eating it. Since I'm not a huge carrot fan, I opted not to try the carrots, but Lav mentioned that she thought that they were excellent. I did try a spoonful of her pea soup and it was a great light spring soup that really drew out the essence of fresh peas. I normally wouldn't have opted for the rabbit but since the waitress was such a huge fan of it, I was excited to try it. It was made into 3 separate pieces of rabbit wrapped in an extremely buttery pastry puff with a layer of duxelles (mixture of mushroom, shallots, and herbs) in between and served with peas and carrots and a sherry cream sauce. Talk about heavy meal. It was quite delicious and it's been a while since I've rabbit but it tasted like any light meat (not very game-y at all). It reminded me of pot pie in a way. It was very good for sure, but not sure if it was as insanely good as the waitress was describing. I had a small bite of the cavatelli and thought that it was missing some flavor or seasoning (maybe because it was served without the lamb it was supposed to have in it? The one dish of the night that was pretty disappointing was the leek gratin - it was just super underwhelming and very heavy on the leeks and it wasn't very creamy or cheesey either.
As usual, we left room for some dessert and the mint sundae ($12) sounded amazing - fresh mint ice cream, devil's food mousse cake and lavender fudge sauce that they infuse in house. It was a giant dessert and knowing that we left many bites untouched made me sad. The mint was refreshing and strong but not overpowering and the devil's food cake was nice and moist - there's just something comforting about the combination cake and ice cream. Combined with the delicious bourbon cocktail I had earlier, I was 100% ready to be wheeled home after this meal.
All in all, I did enjoy my meal there and the decor was breathtaking. It's definitely not a place that I would go to regularly due to the unnecessarily high prices of the dishes, but maybe coming here once a season when the menu changes sounds like the right approach. Total bill: $75/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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