I recently had dinner at Park Avenue Cafe, which I discovered is part of the Smith & Wollensky team. The restaurant catered to mostly an older classic American crowd [the man at the table next to us had on a suit and a bow tie] and served contemporary American fare. There were a few youngsters like us and I’m guessing they were there for the same reason I was: to pay your age. The reason why we came here is because from 8:30PM on daily, Park Ave Cafe has a “pay your age” for a 3 course prix fixe menu. Prices start at $25 [so those under 25 will still pay $25 for the meal] and the most you’re expect to pay is $65. There’s a different scale for kids of course. For a restaurant with entrees mostly in the $30 range; this is too good of a deal to be true; especially for us young ones. Everyone kept telling me kitschy this place is with a Kermit the Frog cookie jar and a huge American Flag mural behind is, but I didn’t think it was so bad. I mean the cookie jars [there are others] do seem a bit out of place, but, meh, it doesn’t throw me off that badly. The American flag reminds me of the restaurant America [now closed], whose whole theme is Americana. I like that they change their menu constantly, but it doesn’t work out in my favor because I constantly forget what is in dishes I’ve eaten and can’t go back to search for information. I can’t really trust my memory for much these days. There are just too many meals!
I love eating out with a group of people because I like to sample multiple dishes from a restaurant before making the assessment of whether or not I want to come back. Yes, I am a pig- what can I say? For my appetizer, I got some home made cavatelli with mushroom, black truffle, basil, and parmesan. Can I tell you how much I love the flavor of truffles?? I love them so much I’d sell liver [not that anyone would really want it the way it’s been treated the last two months] for a year’s supply. The truffles made this dish one of the most savory I’ve ever tasted. I am salivating in my mouth as I try to find the words to describe this right now. The noodles, which look like the shell pasta and the Japanese hand rolled version [the name escapes me], had a good texture; meaning the ridges on the pasta wasn’t too overwhelming. The flavors of the mushroom with the truffles created a wonderful stock- akin to your favorite candy dipped in chocolate wrapped in caramel. I could drown in the sauce and be a happy camper.
Jenn ordered the house cured gravlax of king salmon with avacado, honey mustard, crispy toast. here and I have to declare that this place has the best gravlax I’ve tasted so far. I mean I don’t have much gravlax experience, but it was good. There were the right amount of dill and wasn’t too salty like the one at Casanis. The gravlax alone was flavored well, but it tastes even better with the mashed avocado. The creamy-ness of the avacado with the smoothness of the fish came together really well. I loved the presentation of this dish because I’m a collector of shot glasses and am always excited to see shot glasses used in the non conventional way.
Rich got the terrine of sonoma artisanal foie gras topped with fennel on a bed of fig marmalade and a side of brioche toast. The brioche I’m usually use to is the one that looks like a cupcake, so this threw me off. I wasn’t a fan of it because I thought the texture was too rough and it was bland. I, personally am not a fan of foie gras [French for “fat liver,” ie. that of a duck or goose]. It’s considered a luxury item and is suppose to be an acquired taste and all, but I just never got into it. Rich, however, loves the stuff. My friend Joe says it tastes like lard so he’s not too into it. I mean texture was good, and I liked the fig marmalade- it tastes like balsamic vinegar with sherry to sweeten it up.
I didn’t know what I wanted for an entree, but everyone seemed to rave about the meat dishes. I couldn’t order that because all that meat would be too overwhelming for me so I ended up getting the slow grilled cod with mussels and spaghetti squash. The concept of spaghetti squash just boggles my mind- it’s so cool! You use a fork and scrap the squash after you de-seed it, and the squash will come out in strips! Everything in my dish tastes very bland by itself, but the flavors of the squash together with the cod was good. I thought the skin to the cod was overly done, but the crispness served to be a good contrast to the soft fish meat and squash. The flavors in this dish were very light and natural.
After I heardseveral people rave about thier filet mignon, I had to try some for myself. The filet mignon came with onion marrow marmalade, greens, whipped potatoes, and crispy onion rings. I only had a small piece of the medium rare steak and it was tender and fairly juicy. I can’t go much in depth here since I’m not a big meat person, but I can see why people would like it.
I also tried a piece of Jenn’s duck breast confit. It was a bit on the chewy side, which I didn’t appreciate. Not only was the meat chewy, but the skin was too. Usually the skin is very crisp, but overall, I just think it was undercooked. It also wasn’t very flavorfull. I’ve read previous reviews by other bloggers about this dish and they also didn’t enjoy it.
I sampled many a dishes and ate my own dish, and I still had room for dessert. Can ya believe it? That’s fatty status for you. Park Ave Cafe has a really good selection of sorbets, so instead of an ice cream sundae, I wanted a sorbet sundae. Fortunately, the waiter didn’t look at me like I wanted to ask him to trade my first born for his and was quite nice about it. I got a scoop of the pear and the grape. Both were very good and tastes like their natural respective fruits. The pear sorbet at Monkey Bar is also very good if you are ever in the neighborhood. My sundae came with 6 different garnishes, which were catered to ice creams, but I still used it for my sorbets. There were caramel, raspberry sauce with real raspberries, thick sweetened whipped cream, fudge, toasted rice crispys, and chocolate shavings. The caramel was soooo good. They added a little something to it to call it their own and Jenn and I just kept eating it straight from the glass.
My other fave was Jen’s warm apple strudel with buttermilk-date panna cotta and chai-tea sabayon. I have never tasted apple strudel that was so good in my life before. This is mainly because of the buttermilk and the fact that it wasn’t very sweet. I’m always afraid to eat apple flavored sweet stuff because there’s just too much natural sugar, and when it’s combined with regular sugar- bah- it’s like giving me a heart attack in sugar form. I didn’t taste anything chai-tea, but the buttermilk flavor definitely seeped through and tasted good with my sorbet. You see that piece of sugary zig zag substance in the back? That’s what Jen used to dip into my caramel. She was definitely on a sugar high after that.
Something I didn’t try but the guys really liked is their signature Chocolate Cube, which is a thin chocolate cube filled with caramel mousse and choclate sorbet. It definitely didn’t look like there was any caramel in there, there seemed to be tons and tons of molten chocolate that spewed out by the color. The presentation is lovely though. So, chocolate lovers- the boys have given the okay on this one.
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