There always tons of hot "It" restaurants lists in New York and Battersby in Brooklyn seems to be on every single one of these lists lately. So of course I had to check it out. After careful research, I read that like every other hot restaurant in town that is the size of my bathroom and doesn't really take reservations for small parties, you need to get to Battersby right when it opens if you want to avoid getting angry and be told you have a 2+ hour wait. So Aarti and I decided to meet at 4:30 and walk around the area first. When I got there are 4:30pm, lo and behold, there already was 1 person patiently standing in line. Seriously, is this what we've come down to now? Waiting in line for dinner at 4:30?! Regardless, we came back to the restaurant at 5:20 (10 minutes before it opens) and there were already 10 people in line. Sheesh. We anxiously waited to see if we would make the cut and luckily we did get a nice seat outside in the back patio.
I'll get into the food in a bit (which was excellent) but there were just some things preceding my meal that bumped the fork rating down a bit, besides the ridiculous wait outside. First, when we were seated (and mind you there were only 5 other tables seated before us), the hostess told us that we wouldn't be able to see a food menu for a bit because they only have 1-2 menus and that other people were using them first. Umm, what?!? How does that even make any sense? Why can't they print more menus? Or if it's a timing thing with the kitchen, I'd still rather see the menu but have you tell me that the food will come out later. Luckily, we were able to order from the cocktail menu first. Second, we waited and waited to get the food menu and then waited and waited to actually order our food. I wasn't sure why it would take someone so long to order and pass the menus on because there are only 11 items on the entire menu. It takes about 2 minutes to read the whole thing. In any case, Aarti and I started with the crisp Kale Salad with Green Papaya, Radish, Peanuts ($12), I also got the Corn Chowder with New Potato, Smoked Bacon, Peekytoe Crab ($15). For entrees, Aarti got the Roasted Broccoli Pecorino Toscano, Lemon, Arugula ($12) and the Market Green Ravioli with Baby Vegetables, Brown Butter ($19) while I got the Berkshire Pork Belly with Coco Beans, Aji Dulce Peppers ($27).
Before the food came out, they served us this fresh from the oven delicious rosemary focaccia bread with a ricotta cheese spread. We could not stop eating the bread and that's probably why we walked out of dinner feeling like someone had stuffed us like turkeys. But the bread was amazing. Warm, soft, pillowy with a hit of crunch on the outside. Then they delivered a complimentary small plate of chicken liver crostini with a button mushroom on top. It was pretty good, the liver wasn't too grainy and the bite size was just enough to whet my appetite for real food. I had heard a lot of great things about the kale salad and they weren't wrong. It was fabulous. There was a layer of crispy baked kale and then the bottom had finely shredded fresh kale with green papaya and then topped with radishes and peanuts. It was incredibly refreshing and light and probably one of the best kale dishes I've had in a long time. For my chowder, it was one of those fancy soups where they place all the ingredients in the bowl first and then they pour the soup base separately in front of you. The chowder was creamy and you could indeed taste and see all the cubes of potato, bacon and crab meat in there. But it was more thin than I expect a chowder to be. When I hear chowder, I have visions of really thick and hearty dish. This was more of an actual soup except it was a cream base. In hindsight, with all the bread I ate and the heavy pork belly dish that I ordered, I probably didn't need to have ordered another rich dish. Oh well. Next came the pork belly dish. I will say that the quality and presentation of this dish was 4 to 4.5 forks. The pork belly was delicious and cooked to perfection. It wasn't too fatty where I felt like I would be clogging my arteries while I ate my food, but it did have the perfect layer of fat and crispy skin on the outside that made my mouth and stomach very happy. The layers of meat was also cooked exactly how pork belly should be cooked: moist and juicy. My one small complaint would be that the beans that came with the dish, while very good, made the dish too heavy. The beans were similar in taste and texture to baked beans (though not as sweet) and combining that with a hearty meat dish made the whole dish a bit too rich for me.
I should note that they do have a 7 course tasting menu and I did see several people get it and the food did look amazing. It almost seemed like the food wouldn't stop coming out for them. The couple next to us got it and they hadn't even gotten to dessert by the time we left. All in all, the quality and presentation of the food was definitely top notch, no complaints there. My only gripe was all the pre-seating drama and the waiting before hand. I'm not sure if the hype will all die out, at which point I would be happy to come back but not if I have to get in line at 4:30 on a Saturday again. Total bill: $71/pp with tax tip and a drink.
Photo Credit: Bon Appetit
No comments:
Post a Comment