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New/Notable Restaurants

Vinegar Hill House
72 Hudson Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11201
718.522.1018
http://www.vinegarhillhouse.com

I must admit that there were a few slight hesitations when I was thinking of trying Vinegar Hill. I had no previous experience with Freemans, the hip eatery on the lower east side where Jean Adamson, the chef and owner of Vinegar Hill had a prestigious run with a cult like following. I had also heard that with all the recent hype Vinegar Hill was getting and the fact that they do not take reservations, the wait can be long for a seat in the minimal space that the tiny little neighborhood restaurant occupies.  But I released my hesitations based on the recommendations of a few folks I highly trust. The restaurant is located on a seemingly deserted cobblestone street in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood but was not too hard to find. There are little to no signs that there is much life in general on the block where Vinegar Hill is located, let alone signs of a there being a happening eatery in the vicinity. I had to check the address twice and call to verify that there were no other Hudson Streets in the area. It was a dark, rainy night and I was a little scared! But then I saw the steamy windows of the small, quaint restaurant and felt an instant relief.

Upon entering, I was immediately impressed, not to mention happy. The restaurant was crowded even though it was only 7:30 pm, but luckily there was no wait. I found my friend at the bar and we sat and had a quick drink prior to being seated at our table. The bar is small but ever so quaint and inviting. The bartender was in the process of making some specialty drinks for other patrons and I instantly decided to have a cocktail – a Jameson on the rocks with smashed lemons and sugar – as opposed to my usual glass of wine. My friend chose a lovely wine form Bordeaux and it was served in a really cute “Thumbelina” type tumbler that added to the unique ambience. While enjoying my cocktail I began to take a more detailed notice of my surroundings. The restaurant has an extremely warm and cozy feel to it. Its appearance is a combination of old colonial America mixed with a cabin-like feel. The décor is very colonial antique and the small space gives it a warm and comfortable vibe.

After the drink, we were seated at our table which was small and right in between two other tables. It was close knit, which usually is not my thing, however it had an “okay” feel to it – close but comfortable. Our waitress appeared and was amazingly pleasant, upbeat and instantly likeable and enjoyable. She went over the menu with us, told us about the specials, gave us some recommendations for wine and told us a little about the restaurant itself. The staff in general was a notable part of the experience. They were a rarity of sorts because they were eccentric without being annoying like the perfect combination of soul and substance. They were informed but not stuffy, relaxed and inviting, and their lack of pretense not only made me feel welcome and comfortable but it created a natural homey feeling like these were my friends and this was my time to be taken care of.

All of this description and I haven’t even begun to talk about the food. The menu is seasonal, local and sustainable Americana cuisine that was simple and clean, although a bit heavy, as typical colonial American food tends to be, but it did remain naturally creative and offered a modern feel of healthiness. The wood fire oven is not only the centerpiece of the restaurant’s ambiance but of the menu as well. Many of the dishes are wood fired. Famous dishes like the cast iron chicken, which comes in a sizzling cast iron pan right from the oven, or their seasonal wood fired tarts, are made with local, sustainable and seasonal ingredients and are some of the most notorious and wildly talked and written about items on the menu.

We began with a few appetizers because we wanted to try as much as we could. We brought our appetites and our excitement. The experience, thus far in the story, gave us ample evidence that we were in for a real treat. We first tried the shaved market salad with clothbound cheddar, pecans and caraway vinaigrette. The clothbound cheddar, come to find out, is an award winning old world style cheddar made by the Cabot Dairy cooperative in the northeast. The salad was just okay really. The cheddar was incredible, rich and decadent in flavor and unlike any cheddar I have ever tasted. The pecans were good as well. The shaved part of the salad, from what we could tell, was some root vegetables, and the caraway in the caraway vinaigrette, which I was overly excited to taste, seemed nonexistent in the flavor of the actual vinaigrette. The salad was good, don’t get me wrong, but the hype coming in was powerful and it just simply didn’t deliver what I had expected to experience in my first bite at Vinegar Hill.

As a foodie and cook myself, I felt strangely forgiving and decided that the disappointment in the salad was just a fluke so my joy in the experience was still firmly intact. The next dish we tried was called the “tart of the season,” and since it is late fall, the tart was house made guanciale with local leeks and lemon crème fraiche. I’m afraid that the second dish was not a taste that captured my attention either. The tart was beautiful aesthetically, had excellent flavor, and the house made guanciale was truly tasty, but the overall dish fared a little oily for us. At that moment, we were a little confused by our Vinegar Hill experience, although for some unknown reason, I was still enjoying myself immensely and still happy with my experience so far. I found thinking more profoundly about Vinegar Hill instead of chalking the occasion up to another NYC restaurant with a good idea that just misses the mark – just missing the mark is the worst review you can give a restaurant. Positivity and joy were still in the center of my mood, the wait staff was still uniquely and perfectly engaging to us, and my time there was wonderful even though the first two dishes were a disappointment from a culinary standpoint.

The third dish we tested was the wood fired octopus with cranberry beans, olives, mache and charred lemons. It was exquisite. The flavors of this dish were perfection; the taste of the cranberry bean was alive, the smoky charred flavor of the tart lemons was magic to my tongue, the salty flavor of the olives bounced in my mouth and the octopus itself was as succulent and tender as I have ever had. Wood fired octopus is one of my culinary favorites. Octopus innately has a tough rubbery texture that I have never known to be removed until my experience at Vinegar Hill. It was truly mind blowing because I had no idea that octopus could be cooked and served so tender. It was a feat I simply could not wrap my culinary intellect around. We asked our server about the magic and she said, “I probably shouldn’t tell you, but I will. There is an old wise tale that if you cook the octopus with the corks of the wine, it will come out incredibly tender. So that is exactly what we do. We cook it in the wood fired oven with corks for tenderizing.”  I think the true point to the story is that it is indeed not an old wise tale; I believe it to be a pretty solid truth!  And my uncertainty about the food changed to celebration.

Our entrees were next. I know it sounds like a lot of food, but we wanted to give it our all and really see what all the hype is about. We didn’t order the cast iron chicken as most people do. We realized that it was the most popular dish, but we wanted to see what else was there. I had the red wattle country chop with Jerusalem artichokes and tarragon. My dining companion had the roasted pollock with brussel sprouts, apples and mint. In the first bite of the pork I could feel the freshness of the meat and the “greenness” of the heritage breed. The meat was a perfectly cooked medium to medium rare and sliced thin. Every bite was perfection and although the serving size was very large, I wanted to keep eating it. Needless to say, I didn’t finish it all, but I surely wanted to. The Jerusalem artichokes were not a highlight. They were greasy and bland but there were only a few so I wasn’t bothered by them at all, and the tarragon flavored the dish in a surprising and fresh way.

The pollock dish had its ups and down as well. The fish was cooked nicely and was a decently sized portion, however the taste was bland and the normal flakiness of pollock was not as evident. It was “just okay.” But beneath the pollock was a true treasure; the brussel sprouts, apples and mint combo was delicious. The unexpected addition of mint to the apples and brussel sprouts was simply genius. The flavors blended well and the mint didn’t overpower the others with its potent flavor. The dish was light yet warm and cozy with a minty freshness that was a highlight of the evening. Overall, our entrees gave us the same type of dining experience that the starter dishes did – a mixture of highs and lows in the actual tastes and flavors of the food, but the experience itself still had us on cloud nine. Never before had we talked so much about food while we were eating. It was a lovely time as we were never disappointed. Instead we were interested and inquisitive.

The wine list was impressive with many Italian wines and a very notable presence of organic and sustainable wines. They offer a good array of wines by the glass and plenty of choices in the whites and bubblies as well. The beer offerings are poor. There are only a few beers, and I believe I saw that Coors was among them which didn’t really seem to fit. We settled on a Chinon, an organic, sustainable and very earthy wine with a little texture. Our server was well-informed about the wines and had no hesitation with recommendations or letting us know her thoughts which I think is refreshing. We all have opinions and it’s nice to hear them from wait staff.

The desserts were wonderful. I opted for the token dessert, chocolate guiness cake with cream cheese frosting. My dinner companion had the ricotta cheese cake with pine nuts and concord sauce. Both were truly decadent and showcased the ingredients like any good dessert should. The guiness chocolate cake was extremely moist and had an amazing and really indescribable flavor because of the guiness and chocolate combined with a perfectly light cream cheese frosting. The ricotta cheese cake was light and fluffy, and the pine nuts and concord sauce gave it a really earthy feel to it. Dessert was exactly what it should be. It put us over the edge in terms of fullness, and the sugar rush shot straight to our heads in the forms of big bright smiles.

I have to admit, this is a new experience for me – writing about a restaurant with complete thrill even though there were so many disappointments. It seems odd yet it also seems to make sense. As I have aged I have learned that people make mistakes, things sometimes don’t work the way you want them to and not everything is in our control. But our attitudes, our intentions and our positivity make for enjoying life despite all this. I think that Vinegar Hill is the kind of place that just simply feels like home (the kind of home that local sustainable organic foodies envision living in). I had a great time; I was not disappointed by my experience. At Vinegar Hill, unlike many other trendy restaurants, they know what they are doing, they have a clear vision, and they make it work in a way that is imperfectly perfect.

I highly recommend this place for people who know food and for people who believe in local, sustainable, organic cuisines and in the creativity of a vision both in the food and the details of the way the restaurant is run and carried out.

5 of 5 herbs