HUERTAS AND THE CECIL, NEW YORK
By Nicholas Lander
Huertas in New York’s East Village
Just as customers use restaurants for a variety of purposes – to do business, meet friends, even propose marriage – so too do those who work in them. Their most immediate end is, of course, financial, and even before the busy holiday season I hear that waiters in London and New York are earning very good money. But there can also be another desire: to form new alliances that allow general managers, sous-chefs, waiters and sommeliers to move on and set up on their own.
This phenomenon tends to happen most frequently in well-established and respected businesses. Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, a New York-based company employing some 3,500 people, has witnessed this “mixed blessing” – of losing good staff but having new restaurants to enjoy, as Meyer puts it – on numerous occasions.
The recent opening of two new restaurants – Huertas in the East Village and The Cecil in Harlem – by alumni of Meyer’s outposts demonstrates how very different restaurants can emerge from the same melting pot.
Huertas (“orchards” or “market gardens” in Spanish) was conceived by 27-year-old Jonah Miller, who spent three years at Meyer’s Maialino restaurant and who studied for some time in Spain. Miller’s enthusiasm for the pintxos bars and restaurants of the Basque country inspired 25-year-old Nate Adler, formerly of Meyer’s Blue Smoke, to join him as general manager.
Their ambition – to have a bar at the front with a more sedate restaurant in the rear – became a reality when they took over a narrow building that had once been a hardware store. An intervening period as a pizza restaurant means that, somewhat incongruously, an oven now stands directly behind the bar, which is presided over by a lanky barman in a bright-red corduroy jacket.
There is no large display of pintxos at the bar but instead the waiters come to the table with trays of these little dishes, from which customers can help themselves in the style of a dim sum restaurant. On Tuesday nights, all pintxos are just a dollar each. One customer, I heard, managed to eat a record 43.
As we arrive, Miller stands by the open kitchen, which is full of young, enthusiastic cooks. The warm aroma of garlic wafts through the air as he orchestrates a series of exciting dishes: steamed percebes (goose barnacles); slices of chorizo sausage wrapped in pickled carrot; Huertas rotos (thin, crisp potato strands coated in chorizo and topped with a poached egg); skewers of anchovy and olives; and a main course of grilled leg of lamb that’s outshone by the accompanying bowl of diced lamb sausage with chickpeas and a creamy salsa verde.
Egg-topped ‘Huertas rotos’
Huertas is notable for the energy of the team that Miller and Adler have assembled (including a waitress who doubles as a xylophone player), and it’s fun. It will be exciting to see what this duo go on to accomplish together in the future.
Over at The Cecil, Julia Collins (ex-Maialino) has been joined by Paula Tucker (formerly of Meyer’s Jazz Standard). Together they form the management team in this latest manifestation of Harlem Jazz Enterprises, a company originally founded by businessman Richard Parsons, custodian of the renowned Minton’s Jazz Club next door, where all the jazz greats once played.
The driving force behind The Cecil’s menu is Alexander Smalls, who trained as an opera singer and who has now written a menu with chef Joseph “JJ” Johnson that I found highly original. It seeks inspiration from the “African diaspora” and its influence on American and Asian cuisine. Tucker says with pride that she has never before seen a kitchen where a grill is next to a wok station.
We enjoyed a salad of collard greens with spiced cashews and coconut dressing; oxtail dumplings with green apple curry and crisp taro root; and a dish of fried rice, duck egg and hoisin sauce with slices of well-cooked brisket on the side. Less impressive were the egg foo young and the roti pizza topped with oxtail and aged Cheddar.
This is a minor quibble, though, because what Smalls, Parsons, Collins and Tucker have established is a restaurant with a great sense of place and one where everyone appears to be having fun.
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