The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

So the much hyped Barfry finally opened for lunch on Monday, and since my office is right around the corner, I of course had to go there on Tuesday to check it out with my good buddy Chris Schifando.

Barfry is the brain child of chef Josh DeChellis (formerly of the 2 star Times reviewed japanese restaurant Sumile in the village) and Rick Carmac, owner of the quite successful Fatty Crab. It’s an interesting concept restaurant - as the name implies, it serves almost exclusively tempura (although there are more and more non-fried dishes being mixed into the menu), and is in a small space with a large bar for dining as well as tables along the walls.

The space itself is very cute, obviously a lot of thought and design went into the restaurant, and the end result is a place that looks very designed yes still has a lot of character, and feels like it’s been in the neighborhood for twenty years. The walls are paneled with white subway tile, the lighting is just sockets with light bulbs lamps in them, and there’s a chalkboard along the back wall with the specials of the day on it.

At lunch Tuesday, Barfry was almost empty, although I’m sure it’ll be more packed as word gets out that it’s now serving lunch (they’ve been open for dinner for five weeks) since it’s just about the most discussed/reviewed restaurant of the moment. The New York restaurant scene loves it’s concept restaurants, and this one comes with a high pedigree.

So, as to the food. They offer a lunch box special, $14 which today included miso soup, spinach, 1 piece of cod tempura, 2 pieces of shrimp tempura, a pile of green bean tempura, and a soft drink. Our waiter was quick to explain that we could also order a-la-carte off the menu but that this was a much more economical way to go. A bit of a strange pitch, but sold me and Chris, so the lunch box special it was.

I started with the soup, which was a shitake mushroom miso soup, which I would have thought I’d like (I like miso soup, and I like mushrooms) but sadly I flat out didn’t. The flavor was flat, and the mushrooms unappealing in it.

The spinach was a more successful side. It came with some seaweed on top of it that added a nice punch to the flavor and an interesting textural element that worked for me. Nothing I’d be dying to order again, but interesting all the same.

Now to the tempura. It’s much more lightly battered than your typical Japanese restaurant, but that doesn’t mean it’s lighter. The batter they use seems to absorb an amazing amount of oil in ratio to the amount of batter, so while there may be less batter, there appears to be more oil. This didn’t stop me from being really impressed with my first bite of the green beans however. The beans tasted fresh, and the batter is tasty. The same goes for the cod. It’s a really nice piece of fish, but after the first bite, I wanted to scrape off the batter and eat the fish plain, it was just too rich. The shrimp were ok, but for whatever reason seemed to be the greasiest of the three.

Of course, that’s the problem with extremely rich foods, they can be overwhelming after the first bite without a note to cut them. DeChellis is aware of this, and the tempura comes with a selection of exotic dipping sauces that attempt to add that balancing note. Sadly, none of them did the job for me like the sauce at a traditional Japanese restaurant. We had four of them. A wasabi remoulade that had a lot less kick than I’d have expected, and it was adding richness to an already too rich food, the same goes for the sweet miso (too damned rich!) and the red chili citrus sauce, while not making the tempura heavier, just didn’t seem like a good flavor match. The one sauce that did work was the jalapeno soy, but while it was fine, it wasn’t enough to balance the oil.

On a final note, I’ll say that maybe lunch is not the best venue for this kind of food. I could see it being great drunk food, laying a solid base for keeping away a next day hangover, and a damn sight better quality ingredients than McDonald’s. I’ll be back to give it another try, but this time I think I’ll stick with the growing non-fried portion of the menu for lunch (well maybe a piece or two a-la-carte).

C+

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