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“Hundred Acres”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	Soho	Moderate	Great

running a butcher shop, so instead they kept the butcher shop theme for the décor of the front room and turned Provence into the most pure form of Greenmarket restaurant—the menu would change every day (not just 4-6 times a year with the seasons), driven solely by whatever was falling off the trucks from the Hudson Valley and Long Island that morning. They called it Hundred Acres, a name inspired by “Hell’s Hundred Acres,” the chilling moniker given Soho in the early 1900s.

There’s nothing chilling about Hundred Acres. The front room has a hip, energetic vibe, dressed in subway tiles with a long marble bar, a long communal table, and café tables lining French doors sprung open to the leafy streets. The middle room, filled with sage banquettes and hung with oversized prints of an old Pennsylvania farmhouse, is anchored by a central table displaying seasonal vegetables, like a still-life in waiting. Past the center room is the garden, tented (soon with a retractable roof) and given an airy, summer meadow vibe with vines and greens. It’s a beautiful space to host a party.

It was on a recent visit that I realized that this was American cuisine at its finest. I was hosting a group of my food writing students for our end-of-semester dinner. At the end of our meals, as we packed up leftover pieces of chocolate cake and rhubarb crostada to take home, I asked for criticism and praise. They were unanimous in the judgment: Fantastic, fresh, delicious, simple, inspired were words traded at the table. I was unable to disagree. It was truly a spectacular dinner. But what was spectacular about it was not anything fussy. The food was simple, brought to life with little more than a pesto here, an aioli or a sauce gribiche there. It’s honest food, made from ingredients touched by hands not machines. It’s the sort of food you’d expect to be served on a porch overlooking a prairie on a farm in the Midwest, or from a communal table in a big old Plantation house down south, or in a cozy dining room in a studio apartment in the East Village. It’s the sort of food you want to eat, no matter where, no matter when.

We started out with deviled farmstead eggs, given a nice mustardy kick and topped with a sprinkle of paprika that gave the creamy yolks a spicy sunburn ($7). A mixed roasted beet salad (pink and striped and gold) topped with egg and pecans was really more about ... [more, click below]

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Posted: July 6, 2008

Other restaurants in Soho :
+ Balthazar   + Savoy   + Blue Ribbon   + Lupa   + Public   + Kittichai   + Lure Fishbar   + Barmarche   + Porcupine-- CLOSED   + Ama   + La Esquina   + Jerry's- Closed Now   + The Tasting Room   + Papatzul   + Shorty's.32   + The Monday Room   + Ed's Lobster Bar   + Aurora   + Provence   + Tailor   + Hundred Acres   + Delicatessen, By Guest Reviewer Julie Besonen   + The Mott   + The Dutch   + Cherrywood, by Guest Reviewer Dara Pollak   

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