Augieland: Eleven Madison Park, bar snacks

Eleven Madison Park, bar snacks

I consider bar snacks in good restaurants in New York with great frustration. Most of the times I go out I like to drink good wine. Good wine is far better enjoyed with friends. Most of the places in the city with a list of fine wines that are sold for reasonable value happen to be fine restaurants. Although most of these restaurants will serve you a very good meal at the bar, seldom is it something four pals standing around a bar can grab at with their fingers without distracting greatly from the experience. Why won't places like Cru and Hearth make finger food for absentmindedly grazing on at the bar?

It is possible at most places to at least grab an order of fries, and I guess you could pick at an order of agnolotti at Babbo’s bar while discussing what kind of shot Biden actually has, but what we really need is a wine-friendly version of the chicken wing. Places like Stanton Social and Otto do a great job of making serious bar food, but plates of handle-able snacks have not gotten a lot of attention from chefs at fine dining restaurants, which leaves their fine wine lists with only dinner or nuts for accompaniment.

The closest thing to a fine wine bar-snack out there is gougeres, "cheesy poofs" to the Bacchanals and me. I consider the top three gougers in NYC to be at Eleven Madison Park, Brandy Library and Mas Farmhouse. They all switch places for whose is at the top, with qualities like warmth, eggy bite vs. crunchy bite, and presence of clingy little bits of browned cheese weighing heavily on whether a poof is good, great or sublime. Once, at Brandy library I had what I consider to be the best order of gougers ever to this point, and the only order I ever had no interest in finishing was at the bar at Country early in its run.

Daniel Humm has recently taken over the kitchen at Eleven Madison Park and that means three things:

1. There is a big buzz in the foodie world about exciting new cuisine.
2. I got to read possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever read in the NY Observer in late April... "He cooks the whole baby pig in duck fat for 10 hours, bones it and weights it down. He bakes the skin again, cut in perfect squares on a sheet pan."
3. One of the restaurants that both takes wine seriously and offers bar food has gotten a new menu.

Not having had an opportunity to go get a proper sampling of Chef Humm's new offerings at lunch or dinner, I figured at least I could pop in for a drink and see where he has taken the bar menu. So Tuesday night Bear, Frisky, Pebbles, Coolio and I ordered some snacks to go with an '02 Batard-Montrachet we were having:

Warm Basket of our Housemade Gougères (Available After 5:30PM): Up until Humm's arrival the gougers were a good reason to plop down at the EMP bar and order a bottle of wine. Best when the have the little bits of crispy cheese clinging to their bottoms, but never less than very good, these deserve to keep their place on the bar menu. Served warm in a folded napkin, they have a crisp shell and inside a warm breath of great aged cheese simply puffs out of their empty centers.

Grilled Cheese Pork Belly and Gruyère Réserve: Two slices of bread from a very small loaf have had Gruyere grilled to them, then a thick (in comparison to the small finger sandwich) slice of braised pork belly is trapped between them. The other ingredient here is butter. The bread and cheese had been grilled in copious amounts of sweet butter, and it was definitely playing a role. The bit of bacon was about 50-50 fat to meat and wonderfully tender, rich, and generally succulent. An order is five tea-sized sandwiches, but the sumptuousness made one or two enough, so sharing was perfect.

Lobster Club Avocado and Applewood-smoked Bacon: Ok, at the top this is not a club. A club means far more than "has bacon." Club means three slices of bread, lettuce, tomato, mayo and bacon. What this is is the same small slices of bread as the grilled cheese, grilled in even more of the sweet butter (honestly I believe some new technique for making a cell hold more butter than was previously possible may be in use to take this well past its saturation point) with a very small dice of lobster, avocado, bacon and herbs. The sandwich tastes very good, way more like an interpretation of a lobster roll than a club. It does, however, border on feeling disparate between cost and product. This is a small amount of food and an even smaller amount of ingredient for fifteen dollars.

Smoked Salmon Brioche and Horseradish Cream: By the time we got around to ordering this, our party had grown to about eight people. Lest we forget that Danny Meyer’s places are about synchronicity with customers needs, I looked at what seemed a very large order, asked about its size, and was told they had doubled it so everyone could have one. Small loaves of brioche (I suspect the same ones sliced for the sandwiches) have been pared down to cubes, which are topped with the horseradish cream, a slice of smoked salmon and some salmon roe (all radiating from a simple salad of mixed greens). This is a good, solid dish that plays on the lighter side of the menu.