Day Two Hundred and One - ABC Kitchen

Seems like its been a weekend of recaps of dining out adventures, I guarantee next week will feature a variety of yummy cheese-y recipes, pairing ideas, and recommendations. For the moment though, I'd love to fill you in on the fabulous meal I had last night at ABC Kitchen. I'd been wanting to try this restaurant from the time I heard about it -- local, organic, sustainable, fresh food, and direct from the farmers? Sounds like just how I like to eat and with a kitchen imagined by a chef so fantastic, it was hard to fathom that I wouldn't love the meal. As my significant other said, "The menu looks like you created it..."

Walking into the space, the restaurant has the perfect blend of modern sleek touches with a homey rustic barn sort of feel -- a place to enjoy a nice meal but not feel like you can't have a few laughs and a good time, no pretension here. Both the restaurant space and the cuisine served within it are locally sourced and original, the sort of place that you know everyone who is involved really cares and loves what they've put in.

So what did we have?

Well before getting to the food, let me just spend a moment discussing their house made sodas. They make four different sodas: basil/lime, ginger/lime, herbal root beer or tarragon, and lemon-thyme. I had their basil/lime soda with Hendricks gin as a cocktail before the meal and boy was it fantastic, you could taste the freshness of the basil with the slight pucker of the lime, an excellent marriage of flavors.

After looking at the menu where each dish sounded better than the last, we finally decided on what to have. For our meal, we split one of their whole wheat pizzas with morels, Parmesan, extra virgin olive oil, and an egg on top. A thin and crunchy crust with an array of fresh morels, cheese, herbs and an egg, this was a pizza that was completely light and flavorful, an ode to the freshness of the morels, the aromatics of the herbs, the crispness of  the crust, the creamy nuttiness of the cheese and the added decadence of the egg in the center.

I had a delish and simple tuna sashimi and my significant other/dining companion had their bass entree. Each fish was fresh, locally sourced, and organic keeping with the vision of the restaurant and while being all of those things, each fish melted in one's mouth. With our fish dishes, we split a small side of fresh corn, manchego, jalapenos, and a little bit of parsley. It was the perfect sort of dish to showcase the freshness of the corn with the bite of the jalapenos and the herbal bent of the parsley.

All in all, a fantastic meal, I would most certainly go back. This place knows how to do fresh, local, and organic right.

ABC Kitchen
35 East 18th Street
NYC