“These are grandma’s ravioli,” a friend chuckled over ABC Cocina’s scallop-edged empanadas stuffed with a garden ambrosia of Swiss chard, collard greens, mustard greens, spinach and kale, and sparked with chutney-like tomato jam. She meant their size and shape. They’re not Italian, but what are they?
At Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new “Spanish- and Latin-inspired” party barn, forget Nuevo Latino. This saucy little sister to ABC Kitchen is something new: Zero Latino.
“Latin” embraces myriad styles and raw materials from Galicia to the Rio Grande to the Strait of Magellan. Yet, I’d argue it possesses an unmistakable, if undefinable, je ne sais quoi — or, eso cierto algo, if you insist — such as French-born Vongerichten brings to his playfully wide-roaming southeast Asian menu at Spice Market.
But at ABC Cocina, most everything tastes only vaguely Latin, if at all. Many dishes taste damn good by any description, reflecting the pure, elemental, earth-driven pleasures that make ABC Kitchen so compelling. They’re one reason the house is packed, to say nothing of numerous, cutesy-killer cocktails. (Insider tip: a regular caipirinha beats a strawberry one.) You can have a ball even if you don’t drink — just don’t expect the great Vongerichten at the zenith of his creative power.
Raucously loud ABC Cocina is full of 30-something guys in gingham shirts and their jolly babes, “every one with a label bag,” my friend notes, pointing out Gucci, Hermès and Vuitton. The kitchen philosophy touches the designer-culinary bases, too: “global palate,” “farm-to-table,” “responsible” sourcing, slow food and even “indigenous DNA” of “local communities on a global scale,” all said to conjure an “alluring and mystical” vibe.
The rough-hewn look suits the mumbo-jumbo: brick walls, tables of recycled steel and reclaimed oak floors. Get out your flashlight: “Gallery-esque” lighting from drooping fixtures fails to adequately illumine colorful dishes. Mirrors hung too high to reflect anything don’t help.
One night, executive chef Dan Kluger, who also runs 3-star ABC Kitchen on the other side of the ABC Carpet & Home store, was literally running back and forth between restaurants. He wasn’t shopping, but more likely trying to prop up Cocina’s hit-or-miss cocina.
Six menu categories lend themselves to grazing and sharing — and to spending more than prices mostly between $8 to $14 might suggest. Start with guacamole: Although I’m no ardent lover of mashed avocado, ABC Cocina’s, generously textured with sweet peas and sparked by charred jalapeño, could make me one.
Wood-burning grill seafood items (up to $24) registered as straightforward modern-American. Gleaming black sea bass clobbered salmon with weak tomatillo salsa and a few pointless clams. Baby back ribs ruled: three dinosaur-like ribs for just $11, the sweet and tender pork fervently glazed with cumin, coriander, paprika, cayenne pepper and tumeric.
I’m skeptical when a sommelier invokes “maritime breezes,” but no faulting her choice of 2011 Alpendre from Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra ($78), a Pinot Noir-like vintage made from the scarce merenzao grape. I thought it would go swell with the high-fat burger I had on an early visit, but where was it?
The waiter who kneeled tableside to take our order was as nimble with words. It had been demoted to a slider, he said, because, “It’s easier to share.” Silly me, I thought it was because too many people were ordering them.
Sparkling sugar snap pea salad mingles the peas with watercress, Serrano chili, mint and citrus beneath a swirl of house-made sour cream — a garden-redolent, ABC Kitchen-worthy masterpiece. A cheese “table snack” of mild tomme dolce, manchego-like shepherd’s basket and rugged, Stilton-ish Bay Blue delivered a fine-calibrated medley of deepening texture and intensity. Mushroom tacos filled with a forest-full of sauteed maitake, shiitake, king trumpets, cremini and silver dollars, tinted with lime, are best eaten with a fork. What’s the point of the tortilla at all?
“Arroz con pollo,” less Latin than Chinese, bailed in with greaseless (thanks, sunflower oil!), medium-grain jasmine rice, chicken and candy-crackling skin — a salty, satisfying dish enough for two for just $19.
But certain choices seemed tailored to no concept at all, but thrown together for the heck of it. Peekytoe crab and corn fritters tasting little of either might as well have been hush puppies, while “crunchy” (soggy) calamari rings with squirts of jelly-like ancho chili in the holes belonged in a sports bar.
Overcrowded, acidic “market vegetable salad” reflected not ABC Kitchen, but the kitchen sink. “Crispy” flounder in corn tortillas, marvelous the first time, later went south. “BLT tacos” brought up the rear: stone-hard, lardon-like bacon cubes plopped in a floppy corn tortilla amid red onions and tomatoes, an ill-conceived mess near-impossible to eat with fork, spoon or fingers — chopsticks, maybe?
For dessert, salted caramel “impossible” flan, named for its alleged unique smoothness, tasted as good as its promise. But deconstructed passion fruit sundae had us asking, “Where’s the sundae?”
ABC Cocina makes lots of people happy every night. It should make a ton of money for Vongerichten and his partner Phil Suarez. But it proves that, even for a great chef, reinventing an entire cuisine as a bunch of party snacks isn’t as easy as ABC.