10 Downing Street Food & Wine Restaurant, NYC
February 22nd, 2010
Some of you want to know where I'm working now. Now that I'm back in NYC. Seemingly, for good.
The restaurant has a lot of names. None of them names, per se. The address is the name. The name is the address. The address is not one you'd know, unless you knew the West Village really well.
10 Downing Street. No, not the famous UK address. {But ironic, dontcha think?}
10 Downing Street, on the West side of the street, just a blink South of where Bleeker criss-crosses 6th avenue, aka Avenue of the Americas.
Downing Street intercepts Bedford street, the two being tinier than the next.
We have a nice view of the Empire State Building, are a corner space with sidewalk to ceiling windows and boast an intriguing art collection…
But better than the view or the space or even the marble bar with the handsome, witty bartenders, is the chef, Jonnatan Leiva, and sous chef, Matthew Wilbur, in the kitchen. And our amazing team. We don't have a single 'extra' person. Everyone counts, works hard, and is growing leaps & bounds before our very eyes. I sound like a proud parent, I know. It's how I feel.
I'm proud to say I work with and amongst them.
The jury is out on whether Jonnatan's clean, beautiful, vegetable forward, seasonal, soulful, whole animal, vegetable stock based food is what New York City wants, but we'll keep on until they catch up.
Jonnatan arrived at 10 Downing at the end of October, Matthew followed soon after in early December, and I was hired right before Christmas. All of us spent a great deal of time working in & living in California, but I never met either of them until I arrived.
I've been having a lot of fun with my menu, as you've seen. {*Lemon, *Gingerbread, *Chocolate, *Butterscotch.} And as winter slips slowly, sleepily into Spring, our menus change and grow out of the outfits they get tired of wearing.
Gingerbread, gone, Hazelnut, brown butter & pears in. Rethinking chocolate. Slipped in a lebne cheesecake with kumquat marmalade, then it exited stage left. Am playing with an apple chausson with rosemary caramel cream & a weird and wonderful pickled apple & pomegranate salad. And for those of you looking for something slightly less obvious ~ supple chocolate & pistachio cream, rose petal sugar, sour cherry sauce, toasted kataifi & cool rose-mastic cloud…
I'm also having a good time with our Saturday & Sunday brunch menu. I've revamped the granola by buying local honey, omitting nuts, replacing regular yogurt with lebne & making it with as "unsweet" as possible by using maple syrup & honey instead of brown sugar.
I've been bold & nudged in my favourite breakfast item: EGG BABIES! Aka Dutch Pancakes.
And I never thought I would do it, but I have overcome my fear of making marmalade & right this minute you could be served one or all of the following with your French Toast, Dutch Pancake 'Souffle,' and/or'Pastry Basket': kumquat, lemon, blood orange, Meyer lemon, or Mineola Tangelo!! We just yesterday finished a grapefruit-fennel marmalade that was one my first attempts.
Although brunch service happens only 2 days a week I've gone all out for the pastry basket. Every week I challenge myself with a new yeasted something. This past weekend I was utterly ecstatic to find Deb's Monkey Bread recipe in time for Friday testing.
If you came in this past weekend, your pastry basket had toasted flour & almond Polverone, ANZAC, cornbread, buckwheat-banana-walnut-coffee-candied ginger muffin, Monkey Bread & a cheesy-pear biscuit.
A lot of you have come in, introduced yourself and allowed me to meet you in person. What a joy this has been! Thank you thank you for supporting the restaurants where I work. It means so much, especially these days.
For any of you who want to see more behind the scenes photos of 10 Downing St. Restaurant kitchen & cooks, I've put up three sets on Flickr. One, Two & Three. Yes, I will continue to bring my camera in & document menu changes & cooks cooking.
And if you live anywhere near or in NYC, I hope to meet & feed you soon…
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