Destination Dining: abc kitchen, manhattan

My job takes me to Newark, NJ with some regularity to work with our team at NJPAC.  I always enjoy my trips there -- this one offered a chance encounter with Mayor Cory Booker and author Philip Roth, who was being given the keys to the city at a reception prior to a screening of a documentary about the celebrated writer's life.  I know you are thinking "Who the heck'd want the keys to Newark, NJ, anyway?" but there are some beautiful parts of the city that are completely overshadowed by its "Armpit of the Eastern Seaboard" soubriquet.  I also like going there because I usually make time for a trip beneath the Hudson to the "City That Never Sips Big Gulps" per Mayor Bloomberg.

This trip, my boss and I made it to lunch at abc kitchen in Manhattan before a business meeting in the city later that afternoon.  abc kitchen, Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's legendary hyper-local, seasonal and all-organic ingredients restaurant is on the ground floor of abc carpets, a New York retail institution comprised of wondrous, one-of-a-kind furniture and startling appointments that cost more than the entire economy of Korea.  It's impossible to get a reservation there; when you try on Open Table your mobile device laughs out loud (that snotty Suri is one mean wench) and if you call them directly they offer unconfirmed seats sometime in the next two years, but only if you're on a list they neglect to put you on.

Tenement Chic

We decided to just show up a few minutes before they opened at noon to snag a couple of the seats at the bar, which are unreserved.  We had to traverse the block twice in order to find it because of the modest, unassuming, ramshackle appearance of the exterior and nearly invisible signage.  The coolest of the cool places in Manhattan eschew the vulgar trappings conventional wisdom in restaurant marketing dictates, such as large, lighted signs and upscale exteriors boasting a welcoming sense of arrival.  (The absolute elite places actually nail their front doors shut, turn off all the lights, and lower their louvered blinds. They're still packed.)  There were several well-dressed, sophisticated Manhattanites idly strolling 18th Street between Park Avenue South and Broadway, casually discussing the Hamptons and Shakespeare in Central Park and Donald Trump's appalling lack of dignity.  Then at five minutes until twelve, they bared their fangs and transformed into savage beasts with one shared goal: to elbow and shove their way to be first through the just-unlocked door, trampling the slower-witted beneath their feet while snarling chilling cries of victory.  We managed to land the last two seats at the bar, clothes mostly intact except for a broken shoe and a torn lapel.  (But you shoulda seen the other guy.)

Our server bartender, who was at least 85 pounds and named either Geoffrey or Chaucer, can't remember which, pointed us to some cold press, non-alcoholic super food aperitifs concocted from spinach and jalapeños and kale, plus several other things you wouldn't have eaten as a child in a million years. It was pretty good but I was glad when I finished it as I feared I was sporting bright green vegetable stains on my front teeth.

We ordered some tuna sashimi, some roasted beets in house-made yogurt, a chicken paillard with arugula, and a veggie burger.  While we were waiting, I looked around the insanely packed dining room filled mostly by 21st Century Ladies Who Lunch, aka Yoga Moms.  They were all skinny, in their thirties and forties and wore draped, neutral shawls and sweaters over white stretchy pants and springy wedge sandals.  They owned important jewelry.  You could count the vertebrae on most of them right through two layers of clothes and they all sported the same colors of three-toned hair.  20 percent of them were accompanied by metrosexual husbands of the first degree and there was a handful of  smartly-dressed, eyebrow-sculpted gays to round out the scene. (Some of the husbands and gays were communicating in code comprised purely of small gestures and fleeting facial expressions, but that's another kettle of fish altogether.)

Then the food came and OMGoodness what a revelation of palate-pleasing perfection.  I've always

Beet Me Up, Scottie

liked beets, but these had been plucked in their first moment of prime-hood and roasted with all the loving care a doting, first-time mother in Muncie, Indiana is capable of. They were coddled by an unbelievably refined, silky yogurt spritzed with Extra Virgin Mary Balsamic, and wore a smart coiffure of chervil sprigs. It was like eating a farm minus the dirt.

The tuna sashimi was cut unusually, not in the symmetrical, Asian style, but more straightforward and countrified in a little white dish with some heavenly miso and soy broth. The texture of the tuna was almost like undercooked Jell-o and I hogged more than my fair share, a fact that did not go unnoticed by my boss, which I am hoping he will have forgotten about when my annual review time comes around.

I Spy a Pita Pie

I left him to his chicken paillard and dove into my veggie burger with all the gusto an acned teen-age boy displays when presented with a large pepperoni pizza of his very own. The grilled patty was comprised of more kale, turnips, black beans, oatmeal, carrots, chick peas, and a bunch of other happily blended produce which had been slathered with a generous dollop of that luscious house-made yogurt, and swaddled in a fresh, house-baked pita pocket alongside some julienned raw carrots.  It killed me. I could have kept eating it until I exploded into a wholesome pile of vitamins and nutrients (not to mention roughage).

I totally get that restaurant and understand why it is so wildly, ridiculously popular.  I also know it would be a miserable failure in Dallas because for the most part we prefer strip steaks and bacon and fajitas and Frito pie to organic vegetables served on mismatched china.  If they are abc then we are xyz.

I am keenly interested in and shall continue exploring and savoring the many more letters in the alphabet that lie between.  See you in a spell.