And why we do not print a supplier list
Where the food comes from
The vegetables come from a Hudson Valley farm and the greenmarket, the fish from a Brooklyn wholesaler, the beef from an upstate abattoir and the flour from a mill in the Finger Lakes. We are not naming any of them, and that is on purpose.
The reason
A supplier list on a website becomes a marketing claim the moment a supplier changes, and suppliers change. A farm has a bad year. A wholesaler is bought. A mill stops delivering to the city. The restaurant that printed six names on its About page now either has to update a web page it forgot exists, or is making a claim that stopped being true eighteen months ago. The second happens far more often.
There is a second reason, less noble and worth admitting: naming a well-regarded farm on a menu is borrowing that farm's reputation to sell a dish. Plenty of restaurants that name a farm buy a small fraction of their produce from it. We would rather describe the food.
What we will tell you
Anything, at the table, about any single dish, on the night. Where that fish was landed, what breed the beef is, whether the vegetables came up from the greenmarket that morning or came in on Tuesday. Ask, and the answer is real, checkable and specific. That is a better promise than a list of names, because it describes what is actually on your plate today rather than what was true when a web page was written.
What we do not claim
- That everything is local. It is not. The olive oil is not from New York State, the citrus is not, the chocolate is not, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
- That everything is organic. Some of it is; we do not buy on the certificate, we buy on whether it is any good.
- That we are a farm-to-table restaurant. Every restaurant gets its food from farms. The phrase has stopped meaning anything and we are not going to use it.
The rest of the things worth knowing
Tuesday to Sunday · closed Mondays
Book a table
Pick a date, tell us how many of you there are, and the form shows the times we can actually seat that many — not every time we are open. Parties of eight and under book instantly; nine or more becomes a private dining enquiry, because a group that size needs a room and a set menu rather than a table. The twelve bar seats are never reservable, so there is always somewhere to eat here without a booking.