The features that some diners dislike about this hottest, brightest and outwardly most gimmicky of all of Jean Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants (the super-beautiful but super-busy front of house, the queue for tables so disconcertingly close to happy diners, its quirky self-relegation (if only location-wise) to “department store restaurant,” its self-conscious eco-correctness—“locavore sustainability,” “menus made of recycled paper fastened to repurposed cardboard,” “compostable place mats,” its sheer visual overload and crazy pace) are the very qualities that others love about the place. It isn’t comfort as per the dictionary definition (“serenity,” “tranquility,” “repose,” “coziness,” “ease”) but if “contentment” is any marker to go by, then ABC Kitchen delivers no end. Why? Because the kitchen rocks.
I happen to know Jean Georges personally; back in 2003, I ended up, through some divine Providence, taking him and his team out to eat on the streets of Jakarta, when they were doing research for Spice Market. It was a whirlwind tour, 48 hours of relentless, calorific grub that saw us slinking into noodle tents in the bowels of Kota at 2 a.m. and noshing of all things on Padang food, described by one of JG’s proteges as “hard-core.”
I remember JG as a slightly built man with quick eyes and a laser gaze that missed nothing; his energy was boundless, and yet there was a quiet steeliness about him that suggested a steady and deft hand in the kitchen. Since that first encounter, my days in New York had become a dream; I have no trouble making reservations at any of his restaurants, I once got to sit in one of his staff meetings in his HQ on Prince Street, and the great man himself once cooked for me a whole meal degustation at this Trump Hotel flagship Jean Georges. And that was BEFORE he invited me to join him for supper at the Chef’s Table with some of his buddies, one of which was Hugh Jackman.
That meal was of the best I’ve ever had. It certainly was the best meal I had up to that point in my life. It was also the first time I understood there was such a thing as magic in cooking, and what the word ‘transporting’ meant. Jean Georges became my hero. And as with all heroes, he isn’t exempted from making the occasional mistakes, and most certainly not from spreading himself too thin (Spice Market, despite its spectacular glamor, remains one of his enduring weaknesses, and that expense account steakhouse Elysium he once had in the Time Warner Building seemed like plain hubris).
But ABC Kitchen is not one of those missteps; if any it is one of its true triumphs, for it doesn’t just showcase what Jean Georges does best (marry a solid classical technique and exotic ingredients, with plenty of flair), but it also loses all that fine dining starchiness in favor of Barnyard-meets-Lower Broadway hip. ABC Kitchen might have been long on buzz and short on comfort—everything so packed, happening, relentless—but once the food comes out, there is always a pause, a grappling for words, a savoring.
The day we showed up there, at a bustling lunch hour, I had made a point not to make a reservation. When faced—as I knew I would—with a long queue, I also made a point not to call Daniel del Vecchio, JG’s trusted second-in-command. Instead, after waiting for ten minutes, I happily allowed the waitstaff to deposit us like two hungry foundlings at the bar near the department store entrance. Not exactly the best seat in the house, but we didn’t care. The place was packed. Platefuls of impossibly yummy-looking dishes were passed around. Dishes which in lesser restaurants sounded so last Tuesday (“kale salad,” “roasted beets”—too LA health conscious, “crab toast with lemon aioli”—not again, “calamari”—you must be kidding), we knew would taste so much better than wherever it was that we had them last. So we waited.
And sure enough, everything we ordered tasted nothing short of fabulous.
Our two starters, the pretzel-dusted calamari with marinara and mustard aioli and roasted cauliflower with onion, walnut crumbs and fried eggs were a step up from comfort food, a step down from fancy—and boy, weren’t those crunchy buggers tasty. But it was the house roast turkey sandwich with smoked apple wood bacon, arugula and jalapenos that inspired paeans. My husband is a man with few words to spare, so watching him rend and devour and eat up every scrap of his sandwich sent shivers up my spine.
As for the mushroom pizza, redolent of parmesan, oregano and egg—currently one of my favorite pizzas in the world—I swear, the egg blinked up from the pizza like an eye. I had half wished I could also order the stellar fried chicken served with hot sauce butter, a sort of Specialty of the Realm (they do a mean one at Jean Georges and at Perry Street as well) but, alas, it was only available for dinner.
When I expressed my disappointment, my husband laughed. “Listen to yourself,” he said, “You talk about this fried chicken as though you’re secretly sleeping with the thing.” It was an amazing thing to come out of my husband’s mouth, but love is indeed a curious thing; when you’re at the receiving end, it sharpens the mind and loosens the tongue, and stays with you for a long, long time. Occasionally you even get to share it with your other love, like a delicious, dirty secret. And so it goes.
