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“Pure Food & Wine”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	Gramercy	Moderate	Good

ou might like it. Then again, you might not, but you should try it.

Appetizers are quite easy to devour with a smile on your face. Lots take the form of wraps or rolls. The mock sushi rolls are filled with shiitake avocado and pickled cucumber and served with a ginger and wasabi-soy dipping sauce. Thai Lettuce Wraps ($11) stuffed with mango, napa cabbage, ginger and cashews come with a tangy tamarind and chile sauce, and summer rolls, ribbons of cucumber tightly wrapped around green papaya and radishes, arrive with chile-coconut dipping sauce ($10). If you don’t feel like dipping your appetizer, there’s also a lovely tomato tartar gussied up with Thai basil, kafir lime and a green mango chutney.

Course number two will score you a killer zucchini and green zebra tomato lasagna ($20) layered with basil-pistachio pesto, sundried tomato sauce, wild mushrooms and pignoli ricotta—the best entrée on the list in my book. It is richly flavored, and truly delicious. I also liked the soft tacos (the tortillas are made from corn and red pepper, ($17), filled with avocado, tomato-lime salsa and spicy beans, and the thin “crust” pizza ($16) topped with hummus and marinated cucumber with green olives, tomato and za’atar. Did it look or taste like pizza? Not on your life. Was it tasty? Yes, if you set aside notions of what pizza is. Then again, my friend said, “It’s a cracker with hummus, and I can get one for $4.”

There are also several “pasta” dishes. The red beet ravioli with yellow pepper puree ($18) is a cool dish—ruby red packages fashioned from sashimi of beets filled with a lemony-cashew filling. Ditto for the linguine-like pasta ($23) made from thin noodles cut from golden squash tossed with a creamy summer truffle sauce. My beef with this dish is that while the squash noodles approximated the taste of a bowl of pasta, the sauce was flat—too much truffle and not enough flavor. It needed a hit of salt, or spice, or both.

The wine list—a biodynamic and organic selection—is quite impressive. We had a pinot gris from the Willamette Valley that was terrific. The tap water (free), which is filtered with an impressive and expensive state of the art system from Japan, is supposed to improve your health, and add years to your life. I was into the water. It’s nice to know that as I take years off my life with excessive wine consumption, I can add them back with the water. Perfect. Also, according to our very perky (and knowledgea ... [more, click below]

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Posted: July 5, 2004

Other restaurants in Gramercy :
+ Casa Mono/Bar Jamon   + Pure Food & Wine   + Parea   + Gramercy Tavern (Lunch)   + 15 East   + Tocqueville   + Irving Mill   + Bar Milano   + Irving Mill   + Maialino   + Asellina   + Corkbuzz Wine Studio   + Breads, by guest reviewer Tracy Weiss   

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