Pieces of April

Bloomfield, that is. Her new restaurant Sailor. Her old restaurant, White Gold Butcher. And the restaurant where she started, The River Cafe. And one of my favorite ingredients.

“Everyone here is exactly where they want to be.”

That’s what I thought when I had dinner at Sailor, the restaurant April Bloomfield has just opened with restaurateur Gabe Stulman. Outside it was the coldest night of the year; inside it was warm, cozy, comforting. And the food was… wonderful.

What strikes me is that the menu is not merely unlike anything anywhere else, but that in a time when so many chefs are opting for luxury - we seem to be in a caviar, truffle and wagyu moment - April has moved in the other direction. She’s figured out how to give humble ingredients their moment in the sun by peering into their souls and offering them new ways to express themselves.

Consider, for example, this strange dark orb. April has reimagined homely stuffed cabbage as a sophisticated vegan dish: radicchio wrapped around a filling of rice and borlotti beans in a red wine sauce. Dense with unexpected flavors and textures, I expect to see this widely copied.

And speaking of dishes that will be widely copied…. Nobody lucky enough to taste April’s butter-blasted celery root will ever think of this vegetable in quite the same way. The normally retiring vegetable has suddenly become a star.

I have always wondered why nobody copied the dish Judy Rodgers put on her menu at Zuni Cafe from the very beginning; it is the most brilliantly simple combination of textures and flavors. Anchovies snuggle into the thin, cold, extremely crisp slices of celery, their sting tamed by the smooth creaminess of parmesan cheese. The bite of the olives is the perfect next taste. I was thrilled to see this on Sailor’s menu.

This crisply breaded sweetbread in its tangy puddle of lemon-caper sauce is another textural triumph. Isn’t it time sweetbreads, once a menu staple, had a revival?

While other chefs are offering exalted hamburgers at absurd prices, April’s taken her famous blue cheese burger, reimagined it as steak and offered it at a lower price than many fancy restaurants now charge for their burgers. It’s the ordinarily overlooked coulotte steak - beefy, chewy, filled with flavor - swathed in blue cheese sauce and showered with an avalanche of shoestring potatoes. And just look at that little slice of lemon lurking on the plate; it’s a wonderful touch.

Texture again: this adorable little fellow is a caramel-covered profiterole, all crunch and crackle and creamy smoothness. Can’t think of a more perfect way to end a meal.

Eating April’s food again made me think about the last place April opened in New York, White Gold Butchers. (It is now a Daily Provisions, a place I appreciate for its mellow coffee and egg-filled gougères. )

December 14, 2016
“Can you stop thinking about that steak?” one of my friends emailed the next morning. “I can’t.”

I’m with him. Two days later, I’m still thinking about the steak at April Bloomfield’s new restaurant,  (which she owns in partnership with Jocelyn Guest and Erika Nakamura, formerly of LA’s Lindy and Grundy). These women have the best beef:  I know it doesn’t look like much, but this unassuming little steak is the stuff of dreams.

But then, everything we tried was extraordinary, from the chicken liver mousse with its thick slabs of charred bread….

to the frilly little carpaccio with its cheese, herbs and mushrooms….

the fantastic ham-laced chicken snuggled beneath a puff pastry dome- this is chicken pot pie’s leap to immortality.

The salad with pistachios and shards of Parmesan is swathed in a lovely lemon dressing…

and maybe, best of all, these potatoes, a take on hasselbacks, rich with meat drippings and topped with salmon roe. Listed among the sides, these deserve to be upgraded to appetizer status.

Part butcher shop, part lunch counter (everyone seems to be focused on the lunchtime cheese steak), White Gold turns serious after dark. Wine. Waiters. Lowered lights. It’s surely the best thing to happen to hungry Upper West Siders this year.

April came to New York from The River Cafe, the iconic London restaurant where so many chefs, from Jamie Oliver to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall first made their mark.

This menu is probably from the early 2000s, and looking at it I’m reminded that Ruth Rogers of The River Cafe offers us an entirely different way of looking at restaurants. When I interviewed Ruthie six years ago at the Cherry Jubilee she had some very interesting solutions to the problems facing restaurants.

Pay people well. Offer benefits. But more than that, The River Cafe has eliminated the wall between the front and the back of the house. Everyone comes in to help prep the food: waiters and busboys (often with their kids in tow), peel potatoes, mince garlic, wash lettuce. As a result waiters often become cooks, cooks find they’d rather wait tables and the tension between the two disappears.

I’ve always loved the restaurant’s honest rustic food. But listening to Ruthie talk about her staff made me admire the restaurant even more.

Poor Man's Caviar
Or maybe not so poor. Bottarga, the cured roe of grey mullet, isn't exactly cheap. On the other hand, you get the hit of caviar – that sexy saline flavor – without the expense. Because you just can't eat that much of it.

One of my favorite dishes of April’s was the bottarga she served at The John Dory. She sandwiched it between a couple slabs of carta di musica, the Sardinian bread that seriously resembles matzo, along with generous amounts of butter and a sprinkling of chile. It was almost impossible to stop eating.

Bottarga is poised to be the next uni - we're going to see it on everything.  Why not? It's fantastic shaved over pasta.  It's wonderful on salads.

Most bottarga comes from Greece, from Italy, occasionally from France. But this one is a strictly American product: local, sustainably produced on the Sea of Cortez, and truly fine. This Florida bottarga is great.

Should you want a recipe.. here’s a very simple one.

Spaghetti with Bottarga and Bread Crumbs

Boil a large pot of water for pasta.

While a pound of pasta cooks, gently sauté a couple cloves of thinly sliced garlic and a fat pinch of crushed red peppers in about a half cup of good olive oil just until it becomes fragrant.

Take as much bottarga as you can afford (classic recipes call for 6 ounces for a pound of spaghetti, but bottarga’s so expensive, and so powerful, I tend to use about half that much) and shave half of it into thin, delicate curls. Grate the rest.

When the pasta is just al dente, drain and toss it with the olive oil mixture and some finely chopped Italian parsley.  Toss in the bottarga, along with the zest of one lemon and a good handful of homemade bread crumbs and serve to six people as an appetizer.