Vinegar Hill House
Posted by bellastraniera - 27/10/09 at 06:10 pm Dumbo: It used to be the kind of place where women didn’t walk alone at night, artists and musicians got home just as day laborers were waking up, and the only place to eat was Pedro’s, though you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat there, either. The nearest deli was in Brooklyn Heights, and there were no grocery stores. You could get a deal living in an old graffiti’d gun factory, if you were willing to rig up your own electric heating system and build your own bedroom wall. The streets were empty, the views were spectacular, and no one else knew where the hell it was.
Fast forward thirteen years to now: “Dumbo,” a woman in a silk wrap said into her cell phone in the middle of Vinegar Hill House the other night. “The neighborhood is called Dumbo.” A half hour later, her friends arrived.
Vinegar Hill isn’t exactly Dumbo; it’s next door, so it hasn’t been as thoroughly gentrified as Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Walking towards Hudson Avenue from the F train, you go several dark, silent blocks before you hear the party – it’s the crowd at Vinegar Hill House, where the door was thrown open to the street.
“I see rich people,” I said to D., unable to forget that years ago, many in the eclectic group would have been terrified to come to an unknown Brooklyn neighborhood after dark. Now they have a reason to face their deepest Dumbo fears: Vinegar Hill House is one of the best new restaurants in the city.
First we were entranced by the décor, though that might be too lofty a word for it. More like an assemblage of found objects, arte povera at its best. The bar was framed by a set of organ pedals and organ pipes. A carved wooden owl surveyed the crowd. A framed needlepoint on the wall commemorated somebody’s 1962 marriage. The overhead office light fixtures looked like they’d been salvaged from the set of All the President’s Men. Bar stools were made of sliced, polished tree trunks. We settled in on them for a drink.
The Norman Trilogy cocktail ($10) was perfect for the season: rye mixed with apple-y calvados and orange bitters that hinted at the winter ahead. Vinegar Hill House also serves a fantastic Basque hard apple cider ($6), sparkly, dry and tart.
When I ordered one of the specials, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting: foie gras and chanterelle terrine with a side of veal hock and lentils? But no: all of these things were pressed into the elaborate layers of one terrine ($13), which meant that the creamy texture of the foie gras contrasted with the nubbly legumes and spongy mushrooms. There was a garlicky, herbal flavor throughout, and the meaty veal chop grounded the whole dish. On the side were sliced pickled yellow peppers, going above and beyond the line of duty for a special.
The shaved market salad ($9) was a julienne of crispy root vegetables, dressed with a savory caraway vinaigrette and speckled with chunks of cheddar and pecans. Caraway provided a note that was homey and exotic all at once.
In another clever twist, though the restaurant is named after the neighborhood, chef-partner Jean Adamson uses vinegar in a lot of the dishes, such as their cast iron chicken ($15). Finished off in a 700+ degree wood-burning oven, the chicken had a crispy skin and a hearty herbal flavor with a dash of red wine vinegar, salt, and maybe a little lemon to cut the fat, with roasted cipollini onions on the side. If you become addicted to this chicken, Lidia Bastianich has a similar recipe for chicken with vinegar, though you probably won’t be able to get that crunch without Vinegar Hill House’s insane oven.
We detected more vinegar in the rich demiglace sauce of the red wattle country pork chop ($24), which had a distinctive red color and almost beefy taste. The sauerkraut underneath tasted German but had the extreme wilt of collard greens. Vinegar Hill House sits somewhere between Europe and the American South.
Ridiculously rich mashed potatoes were nearly saturated with butter, but this didn’t keep us from eating them – quite the opposite. They were whipped, not smashed, another nice old-fashioned Southern touch.
Wines were good, with a Spanish bent, though mysteriously, there was no sign of a full wine list with wines by the bottle. Our service was good with one caveat: expect to wait an hour for a table at the prime dining time of 8pm, even if they say “twenty minutes.”
Another mystery: Why is Vinegar Hill House only reviewed in the Underground Gourmet of New York Magazine and the Dining blog of the New York Times instead of their main restaurant columns? It may be “underground,” since it’s small, independent, and in Brooklyn, but Vinegar Hill House outshines many of its splashier cousins in Manhattan.
Vinegar Hill House
72 Hudson Avenue, between Front and Water Streets
Brooklyn, NY
718-522-1018
vinegarhillhouse.com
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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January 7th, 2010 at 10:41 am
delicious foods! same in actual tasting? anyway i am sure many will patronize this place.