Small Bites

I can say one thing right off the bat: Everyone loved the cheesecake.

Sorry for the dark photo (and the bite), but we were at the end of our meal here. My friend Kelli and I headed out for the first night of Restaurant Week last night. As many of you already read in our cover story in The Line, there are 22 restaurants in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam (more throughout the Hudson Valley) offering $16 dinners lunches and $26 lunches dinners for the next two weeks (Monday through Friday only). I’m planning on hitting one every night this week, and I hope you’ll do the same and share your experiences. (You can find the participating restaurants through this link, www.hudsonvalleyrestaurantweek.com.)

Not very many of the choices are open on Monday nights, but Mighty Joe Young’s is. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the the restaurant (at 610 West Hartsdale Ave., White Plains. 914-428-6868), but it’s gone from being known for its wood-fired meats to being quite the happening bar scene. The bar tonight was quiet. (Sorry I don’t have a photo to share.)

Kelli and I sat down at our table and looked at the menu. Unfortunately, there was no menu for restaurant week. In fact, there were no signs of restaurant week to be found anywhere in the restaurant. If we had just walked in off the street, we’d have had no idea it was even going on. (To be fair, the little restaurant week menu was tucked under the chef’s specials on Kelli’s menu. But I didn’t have one.)

We asked our (absolutely cool and very efficient) waiter about the restaurant week menu, and he expressed shock that it wasn’t available. He brought one right over.
While we were perusing the menu, they brought us some flat bread and olives.

I took these snaps:

The room is cool, with a safari-theme and an airy open feel. Kelli pointed out that the bottom of the menu announces it’s the Number One Choice for Bar Mitzvahs. (By whom, it wasn’t clear.)

For our three-course, $26 prix fixe menu, here were our options:

Appetizers:

Soup of the Day (Lentil)

Wild Boar Quesadilla

Baby Iceberg Lettuce Salad with Green Goddess or Gorgonzola Dressing

Entrees

Linguine & Manila Clams with Garlic and Broccoli Rabe

Fire Roasted Free-Range Organic Chicken with Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Asparagus

Wasabi-Horseradish-Crusted Salmon with Black Chick Peas

Desserts

Mighty Joe Young’s House-made Ice Cream or Sorbet

Creme Brulee

New York Style Cheesecake

OK. What would you have chosen? For comparison, if you ordered off the regular menu:

Mighty Joe Young’s by the numbers:

The quesadilla ($12)

The salad ($10)

The chicken ($21)

The salmon ($25)

We also discussed what we would have chosen off the regular menu if Restaurant Week was not available. I was taken with the Merguez and goat-cheese pizza ($12) and the Hanger steak ($22). Kelli said she would have gotten the panko-crusted Maryland crab cake ($10) and the sage BBQ St. Louis Ribs ($30).

But instead:
We picked the salad —

— which Kelli called “refreshing,” and

the quesadilla:

Unfortunately, though the idea was grand (and I quite liked the mushrooms inside and the mango-cilantro salsa), the quesadilla was a soppy mess. It tasted good, if a little sweet. But if it were crispy, it would have changed my entire outlook on the dish.

The same could be said for the chicken. Though it tasted good (and the meat was juicy), the skin wasn’t at all crispy. (I guess I’m a sucker for good texture.)

The salmon was cooked perfectly medium rare, as we asked:

The black chick peas, eh. I enjoyed the salmon too much to be messing with those.

After our entrees, I went around to see who else was there for restaurant week. These folks promised they’d weigh in on what they thought of their dishes too. I got photos of:

The librarian friends:

Couple Number 1:

Couple Number 2:

And the friends: (who get bonuses for saying they read my column! Thanks!)

Then Kelli and I ordered dessert. The cheesecake — which was divine — and creme brulee.

We couldn’t help ourselves! Delicious.

While we were waiting for our check, they brought over these peanut brittles. Addictive, but they coated my teeth like a zamboni!

All in all, I thought this was a good menu for restaurant week, but I wondered about the choices on the menu. Seems to me when you go to Mighty Joe Young’s, you’re looking to have meat. Steak, probably, or game. (Though I seem to recall the menu used to have a lot more game than it does now.) So IMO, it would be better if they could offer something more representative of the restaurant. I mean, do you think you’d go to Mighty Joe Young’s and order salmon?

Before I leave you and hope that our other friends will weigh in with their restaurant week opinions, I’ll share this last photo of a nice couple from Georgia who had never heard of Restaurant Week. In fact, in their tiny town (300 people, they said), they don’t even have a restaurant.

I sure hope they had a good meal!

Photo Caption: library-14019.jpg