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“Acme”

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

I had no idea I liked porridge. In fact, other than eating imaginary bowls of the cold, hot, and just-right stuff with my daughter Emily (who plays a charming Goldilocks to my Mama Bear), I'm not sure that I have given porridge all that much thought over the years. That was until I had dinner at Acme, the now cult-favorite among the New Nordic food loving set. Now it seems, I'm having a full on love affair with the stuff.

The restaurant's Danish chef, Mads Refslund, who comes to Manhattan from Copenhagen, where he helped pioneer the art of forager cuisine with René ­Redzepi, at the world-famous restaurant Noma, is a porridge master. If the three little bears were serving his clam, scallop, and pearl barley porridge, Goldilocks would've eaten all three bowls, no matter what their temperature. This porridge was at once light and hearty, salty and sweet, ethereal and earthy, with caramelized scallops and salty clams surfing on a brilliant broth manifested from silken barely, butter, beer, and toasted sunflower seeds. It's like nothing I've ever imagined, a romantic fairy tale rising from a city of dark secrets.

And then there is his other porridge, the one served at the end of the meal; a porridge dessert. This one is also a miracle, but first more about what happens in between these two bowls. By the time you arrive at dessert, you will have probably oohed and ahhed not only at the food, most of which has a fairy tale quality to it, like the chef's imagination was set alight in a some far away forest of magic, but also at the crowd, so startlingly beautiful as to be a mirage.

Models, actresses and the handsome bearded men who surround them, apparently have no other place to be than Acme. They gather here in numbers, but the sheer loveliness and dewy youth of the crowd should come as no surprise. After all, two of the four owners of Acme have been running downtown-scene restaurants for two decades (most notably ­Indochine and BondSt). The glittery and the gorgeous follow them like right-wing Christians to a Santorum rally.

Their newly designed Acme, which for decades was an old honky tonk haunt, feels all grown up now, with its rows of weathered banquettes, walls of neatly framed artwork (prints of Playboy bunny-inspired skulls by Richard Prince and a neon sculpture b ... [more, click below]

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Posted: April 9, 2012

Other restaurants in East Village :
+ Yujin-- Closed   + Jack's Luxury Oyster Bar   + Mermaid Inn   + Five Points   + Lavagna   + Five Points   + Bond Street   + Jewel Bako   + Alphabet Kitchen   + In Vino   + Bao 111   + Chikalicious   + Il Buco   + Hearth   + Lima's Taste   + Mercadito   + Hedeh   + Momofuku   + Una Pizza Napoletana   + Winebar   + Uovo-- CLOSED   + Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction   + Gotham Bar & Grill   + Colors   + Chinatown Brasserie   + Knife and Fork   + European Union-- NEW CHEF; SEE APRIL 2007 Review   + Aroma Kitchen and Winebar   + Stand   + European Union   + Mercat   + Gemma   + Back Forty   + The Smith   + Seymour Burton   + Belcourt   + Graffiti   + The Redhead   + Double Crown    + Apiary   + Joe Doe   + Apiary by guest reviewer Kiri Tannenbaum   + DBGB   + Northern Spy   + Goat Town   + Saxon + Parole   + Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria   + Acme   + Calliope   + Nicoletta   + JEPPNEY by Claire Jaffe   + Feast   

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