My discussions of the restaurants Toni and I ate in during our 30-days in August-September have been less detailed just because of the time that has passed since I got around to posting all of this. My memories have already faded.
So for my final post of our trip, I’m going to post a somewhat edited conversation I had with another Hungry Onion participant right after we’d eaten at Foxface Natural, which was before the rave reviews in the NYT and the New Yorker.
(I’d also highly recommend Robert Sietsema’s dyspeptic dissenting view in Eater.com, titled “This East Village Hype Machine Charges $28 for Two Shrimp” – https://ny.eater.com/2023/10/23/23925204/foxface-natural-east-village-review )
This exchange is lightly edited because I was frankly a bit tipsy when I wrote it in the middle of the night:
HungryOnionGuy: “Did you go to Foxface? How was it? I The owners and chef are all original CH folks and are on Mouthfulsfood.com .
If you were there, did you notice a guy with a pronounced British accent and a 20 something year old daughter dining there? He’s another CH/Mouthfulsfood person.”
Me: “We did go and had a great time, in part filled by speculation about whether the older gentleman and much younger lady were father and daughter or lovers. I bet on father/daughter, Toni favored the lovers hypothesis. To be fair to Toni, she wasn’t facing them so she couldn’t see much of their interactions.”
“We really enjoyed the meal, the people-watching, and the interactions with the owners and the employees. Overall, the experience was tremendous, but there were some nits about the food – as you’d expect when the menu is this playful and experimental.”
“The people watching was tremendous, topped by this really hunky bearded guy in a cute tennis skirt with HAWAII on the butt. The neo-punk soundtrack was a lot of fun, I kept shazaming songs to see what they were.”
“(A detour: The New York magazine review of Foxface Natural mentioned that the soundtrack the night they ate there included “I Fd Yr Mom” by Sorry Mom. Last August, Toni and I saw Sorry Mom at Elsewhere in Bushwick and Toni was standing by the lead singer’s dad when they played “I Fd Yr Mom,” which is a really good and funny neo-punk song. If you have a chance to see Sorry Mom soon, you should jump on it as they are on a Sex Pistols-esque brief meteoric flash of brilliance.)”
“The two reds by the glass were both natural, which we ordered after grumbling about how bad the natural wines we’d had in Tbilisi were – Sivan laughed and said that their natural wines were nothing like the rotgut fermented grape juice the Georgians make. They were the best natural wines we’ve ever had, but did not convert us into fans of natural wines.”
“We got the sourdough (11 dollars!), cured Boston mackerel, kangaroo tartare, girella pasta stuffed with golden tilefish, and smoked Boer goat.”
“The highlights were the superb girella pasta (our only complaint was that the server took away the plate before we’d sopped up all the sauce with the sourdough) and the pureed sweet peppers that accompanied the mackerel.”
Girella pasta:
“The kangaroo tartare was really good, probably better than most beef tartare I’ve had because it seemed lighter – maybe because it was kangaroo but maybe because it omitted the egg that makes beef tartare a little heavy. The only suggestions I would make for the tartare are (a) to reduce the generous portion size somewhat (it was Kangaroo Mountain), as almost all raw meat dishes (tartare, Ethiopian kitfo, Lebanese kibbeh nayeh) become cloying fairly quickly and (b) serve the dish with sourdough or some equally heavy bread. The flatbread that was served with the tartare was delicious, but not heavy enough to stand up to the richness of the meat.”
“The only clear miss of the meal was the jet-black eggplant puree that accompanied the tartare. It was visually striking but bland to the point of near tastelessness. I suspect Sivan was aware of issues with the eggplant as she emphasized to us when she served the tartare that we should first taste it on its own, with no accompaniments.”
“The mackerel was superb and the little bits of pickled vegetables that accompanied it were even better.”
“Our reaction to the smoked Boer goat was, I think, purely a function of expectations.”
“I am a serious fan of barbecue.”
“Toni and I take barbecue vacations – our ‘second honeymoon’ this spring (to celebrate our 50th) included meals at seven of the most famous Eastern Carolina barbecue places (this followed recent trips to Austin and the Rio Grande Valley to eat barbecue).”
"And, though I’m not very good at it, I’ve spent a fair amount of time making backyard barbecue (my daughter told me she once wrote a post-grad essay on her favorite food memory, which was of me awake at 2 am, sipping bourbon, and cursing the difficulty of keeping the fire steady). "
“I have spent scores if not hundreds of hours on a barbecue spreadsheet covering more than 1000 restaurants that aggregates the opinions of every knowledgeable barbecue critic I’m aware of.”
“I know and like barbecue.”
“The menu description of the Boer goat at Foxface sounds like barbecue – ‘smoked low and slow.’ When I asked our server for more details, she brought over the chef, who patiently described the whole cooking process (under my cross-examination) - cooked for 16 hours over cherry and apple, in a gas-assisted Old Hickory smoker (which Sivan said was the largest NYC permits for indoor cooking), pure smoke for at least 3-4 hours (or more depending on the fattiness of the goat), then wrapped to avoid oversmoking. He even showed us photos of what Boer goats look like.”
“So Toni and I were psyched for some heavily smoked barbecue.”
“That’s not what we got. Instead, we got a very lightly smoked plate of roasted goat, with some delicious new potatoes and a delicate tomato sauce.”
“I’m sure it was tremendous, but it was such a mismatch with our expectations that we did not fully appreciate it. To make things worse, we’d finally caught longtime Bed-Stuy neighborhood favorite Royal Rib actually open the day before and it was surprisingly good barbecue pork and ribs. By our standards it was very lightly smoked, but it was delicious, solid A-minus barbecue. I’d actually had leftover Royal Rib pork on white sandwich bread for lunch the very day we ate at Foxface Natural.”
"So, measured against what I was expecting for the smoked Boer goat at Foxface Natural, my reaction was, ‘This isn’t even the best barbecue I’ve had today.’ "
“That wasn’t fair, I’m sure. The goat was delicious, but it didn’t fit the taste profile of American barbecue that was imprinted on my brain. If it had been described as ‘roast’ goat without using language that evoked classic American barbecue, I’m sure I would have found it delicious (and we have leftovers that I plan to re-taste).”
“I don’t mean to end on a negative note. The meal at Foxface was memorable, inventive, and fun. I’ve already recommended it to our friends with whom we come to NYC every January to eat. But I do think recasting the description of the Boer goat dish is advisable.”
An update to this semi-drunken late night review: We saved the leftover roast Boer goat for our lunch on our bus ride back to northern Virginia. Shorn of any expectations as to its being “barbecue,” the goat was sensational, even as leftovers balanced on my lap on a bus bouncing southward down I-95.
I’m sure Foxface Natural is not the same now, given all the publicity. But the meal we had there is one we’ll remember for years.
