Yesterday Evening - Hundred Acres

Many of you have probably forgotten us; as a matter of fact, we have forgotten us, but we are still out here travelling and eating.

We are attempting to follow the Country Lady’s suggestion and make commentary on a restaurant in which we ate with the A-Girl on Tuesday night. It was Hundred Acres and is owned and operated by the team of Marc Meyer and Vicki Freeman, who have brought us Cookshop and Five Points. Continuing on their successful theme of locavore/Greenmarket-driven cooking, Hundred Acres is less formal and less expensive than Cookshop, and less ‘precious’ than Five Points.

H. Acres was opened in the former Provence, which had been bought but not created by Meyer/Freeman, and the space has been incredibly well re-tuned. Many would say all that remains of Provence is the address on MacDougal Street and the phone number, when in reality, the biggest change is a repositioning of the front door. Once seated in the restaurant we began to imagine that we were somewhere else in a well-run, long-owned family restaurant that has served good American cuisine for many years in some well-heeled Northeastern college town... think, Princeton.

Following this fantasy, one could imagine that the decor has been updated at different times by different generations of family management. There are the large, graceful mid-century modern Nelson hanging light fixtures, the pre-WWII white tiled bar back splash, the 80’s sconces and the contemporary chairs, all presented against the original old wood paneling and floors.

That said, it is the success of Meyer/Freeman and their designer that the redesign, which retained the back room and the garden room, conjures up this feeling of longevity. The food echoes the decor. The menu is expected to change daily and present the best of local grown, seasonal ingredients. Last night's offerings included 6 or 7 starters, 6 main plates and 3 sides.

Eating with the A-Girl always puts an emphasis on the starters, and true to form, we had 4 plus a main course, one side and a cheese plate. For beverages, she pronounced the cocktail list “awful” but was pleased to find that the table bread was a Sullivan Street Bakery Italian round loaf. We were tickled pink over the wine list. It was both sides of a page, well printed, with whites (by the glass and bottle) on one side and reds on the other. The prices ranged from low ($20’s) to high ($150), the descriptions were concise and the selection balanced and interesting.

We rewarded their efforts by starting with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Channing Daughters Winery, a Long Island producer. For $48 it offered white flowers in the bouquet backed up by a dry fruitiness and pleasant minerality in the mouth. All in all, a good drink.

To go with this fresh Sauvignon, we started with:
Deviled eggs served on a bed of watercress – like Grandma’s on a busy day, they were fine and reverential but could have been spiced differently
Fried squash blossoms and crab relish – well the A-Girl says that squash blossoms are out of season, but we say (in an admittedly hypercritical way) that the oil in which they were fried had been used for other things, however, the crab relish was EXCELLENT!! Lightly pickled corn kernels tossed at the last moment with picked crab meat – fresh, cool, seasonal, delightful; the blossoms became extraneous garnish
Fried green tomatoes – freshly fried, not greasy with an excellent batter, but the tomatoes needed to be sliced twice as thick: fried tomatoes are a study in crispy and mushy, hot and cold, here the thinness of the slice eliminated the mush factor; our waiter was from Georgia and told us he had said the same the night before to the chef
Grilled trumpet mushrooms with fromage blanc – the all over masterpiece of the evening, grilled sliced mushrooms tossed with baby salad, salt and pepper in a light olive oil dressing and a quenelle of savory (not the traditional sweet) fromage blanc to smear on a baguette toast

Next up was a yummy red wine from Southern Italy, Puglia, a Salice Salentino for $38, this was the steal of the evening. All the baked earth and hot sun was funneled by those grapes into a big bold full bodied red. It was a great accompanist to our main dish:
Cooked sliced ham with a citrus sauce and a vegetable I cannot remember (!) – this was 2 large thin slices of good ham served with a light lingering citrus (more lemon than orange), the dish a successful contemporary riff on the 60’s/70’s version of big pink sliced hams with pineapple orange sauce
3-Bean salad (as a side) – green beans, wax beans, and lima beans all well cooked served in a hot version of what we grew up with in the south as a cold side dish

To close, a cheese plate of 2 decent but forgettable American pasteurized cows milk semi-hard cheeses accompanied by a little bowl of seasonal fruit that last night included currents, cherries, and gooseberries. When we whined to the waiter about pasteurized cheese, he told us that when they first opened there were unpasteurized cheeses on the menu and people had refused to eat them so they dropped them... silly Americans!

Anyway, all in with too much wine for around $200 including tip; we’d be happy to go back, can imagine spending less but didn’t feel bad about last night’s cost either.

Check it out!