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“Penelope”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Lunch/Takeout	New American	Murray Hill	Cheap Eats	Good

ut an hour or so. We were never rushed and our coffee cups were replenished regularly.

Lunch and dinner both run the same homespun menu. This is not a foodie haunt. You’ll find no pork belly, not a single lamb rib, nor even one bowl of hand cut pasta tucked in with the season’s first crop of fava beans. No, no, and no. This is the place foodies go when they want to recover from the high-pressure eating train. There’s a bubbly mac’ n cheese ($9.50), a chicken pot pie ($13.95) under a blanket of pastry, a crisp flaky spinach pie with salad greens ($9.50), a juicy burger on a sesame bun with leaf lettuce, red onion and a slice of tomato ($9.50). There’s a smoked salmon sandwich on black bread with tomato, red onion, and arugula and a splash of Green Goddess dressing ($9), a gooey grilled cheese layered with Swiss, American and Fontina on sourdough ($7), and an oversized hummus sandwich spread over puffy somun bread (sort of a thin foccacia) filled out with ripe avocado and arugula ($9).

Craig and I cannot go to Penelope without ordering the warm artichoke and spinach dip ($8.50). You’ve probably had a similar incarnation of it at Freeman’s after you’ve waited about two hours to be seated. That one’s good too, but you don’t have to wait at Penelope and this one’s better. Served with three kinds of bread—pita, seven grain and sourdough (all toasted and warmed), the dip is creamy and spinachy and loaded up with tender artichoke hearts, but it also gets a fresh lemony kick that adds the right amount of zing.

We are also fans of the chalkboard special—the Turtle Cove Lobster Roll ($16.50). Named for one of Jenny’s favorite surf spots in Montauk, this one’s loaded up with hunks of sweet lobster meat dressed in lemony mayo, with a hit of celery, and served on buttered, griddled Tom Cat Bakery brioche. It comes with a pile of those perfect skin-on handcut fries. I love these fries so much, I’ve even thought about a French fry sandwich, maybe topped with melted cheese. I know. I have issues.

If you don’t do lobster rolls (I have taken a break since I wrote the story about them for the Post and ate two a day for a week), there’s also the big ‘ole hero stuffed with light and fluffy well-seasoned chicken meatballs, topped with melted fontina on a hollowed out baguette ($9.50).

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Posted: June 18, 2007

Other restaurants in Murray Hill :
+ Breakfast at The Cafe at Country   + A Voce   + Country (Upstairs)   + Darna   + Penelope   

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