Here finally is my long-promised last meal report from my brief trip to New Jersey and New York in May. It features my second dinner at Foxface Natural in the East Village. Considering it took me two months last year to write up my first dinner there (in the company of the missus), it’s only fitting that it’s taken me almost three months to write up the second. But will you be grateful? No. This meal was not eaten with the missus—who did not accompany me on this trip—but with a friend, with whom we’d eaten at Semma last year and I’d eaten at Baar Baar with in 2019. I don’t know if she’ll agree re Semma but I think this is easily the best of our three NYC meals together, even if it resulted in the confirmation of the Curse of Foxface Natural. What do I mean by the Curse of Foxface Natural? Read on.

Those unfortunate people who follow my Twin Cities restaurant reports closely may remember my use of the phrase “the Curse of Joe Beef”, which began to creep into my reports on the fine dining scene here after my first meal at Montreal’s legendary restaurant in 2015 and which was cemented after my subsequent meals there in 2016 and 2019. Simply put, the Curse of Joe Beef refers to the intersection of high quality ingredients, sophisticated cooking and relatively reasonable prices. Joe Beef, I said, offered such an incredible value at this intersection (which is not to say, of course, that the meals were cheap per se) that it became difficult to be satisfied with lesser meals in the Twin Cities (and elsewhere) that cost more even if they were pretty good on their own terms. Well, I have not eaten at Joe Beef in five years and so cannot confirm if this is true, but I can tell you that you no longer have to leave the country to be affected by this; a trip to New York that includes a meal at Foxface Natural will have the same effect.

We thought so last year after a meal which seemed a steal in Manhattan for a meal that featured shellfish and fish out the wazoo and excellent wines. Their menu’s emphasis remains on seasonal fish and shellfish, some of it (relatively) local, some of it not, all of which is always sourced from small purveyors who can guarantee absolute freshness and specific modes of dispatch/handling that preserve their quality. Their meats too are sourced in a similar manner. And none of it is portioned out in a parsimonious manner as you can see from the photos below. The wine list too is hard to beat—assuming, that is, that you like natural wines. You would expect this combination to cost the earth anywhere, to say nothing of in Manhattan, but it falls instead on the reasonable end of the contemporary American fine dining spectrum. Both my meals came in at $160/head all-in with comps factored in and both could have been cheaper still. Of course, Foxface Natural are able to keep their prices down in part because they own their building. But this doesn’t change the mild sense of cognitive dissonance I now experience in paying almost as much or even more in the Twin Cities for food that is not at the same level of ingredients or execution and often both. Ah well, these are, as they say, First World problems.

(Speaking of comps, this meal also featured a number of comps and I mention them upfront to acknowledge that I have known the proprietors of the restaurant, Ori Kushnir and Sivan Lahat, for more than two decades now online. I leave it to you to filter my evaluation of the restaurant as you see fit on this basis.)

At the missus and my first meal at Foxface Natural last October, Ori and Sivan has put together a tasting menu of sorts for us from their then current menu. That menu had changed significantly by May, even as the general format remained the same. I think the only thing that remained on the menu in a fairly similar guise was the signature kangaroo tartare, and even that dish was not identical. At any rate, we did not order from the regular menu. This because by the spring of this year Foxface had begun to offer a set menu for two. This menu offers a sort of greatest hits of whatever the current seasonal menu is. The price, spoiler alert, is rather reasonable for what you get: $90/head before drinks, tax and tip.

What do you get? Well, keep in mind the menu fluctuates daily and changes seasonally but on May 15, 2024 this is the selection of “small” plates, main and dessert that $90 would have gotten you:

• Glidden Point Oysters, fennel oil, oyster foam
• Hiramasa “Pastrami” on rye
• Surf Clam Two Ways: red aguachile, fermented white strawberry; schnitzel, tartar sauce
• Blufefin Tuna Crudo, kombu, puffed forbidden rice, chive olive oil
• Purple Clam, local asparagus, ramp sauce, fermented rhubarb
• Kangaroo Tartare, coriander-carrot puree, Sardinian flatbread
• A choice of Montauk Fluke, simply roasted with olive oil, garlic, parsley, spring greens & potatoes OR BBQ Boer Goat, smoked low and slow, recado negro, sour orange, polenta beignets
• A choice of White Asparagus Gelato, roasted strawberries, pink peppercorn, almond meringue OR Tahini Gelato, pomegranate molasses, pistachio brown butter crumble

There is only one thing wrong with this menu and it is that word “choice”. Both people have to choose the same large plate and the same dessert. Now I’m not suggesting that the restaurant should give you both or let diners choose either. I’m only saying that while you will deeply enjoy whichever you choose, you will nonetheless feel great pangs of envy when you see the other going out to other people at the counter. So it was for my friend and I: we opted for the BBQ Boer Goat and it was utterly fantastic; but did we want to cry as each platter of the Montauk Fluke passed us at the head of the counter? Yes, we did. Perhaps moved by our pain, they gave us one each of both gelatos (both of which were as fabulous as they were audaciously conceived).

How about the rest? I will spare you a monotonous recap and just say that everything was excellent and that the construction of the menu was perfect. The oysters and the hiramasa (a type of amberjack) came out first. The oysters were lovely, very well counterpointed by the fennel oil and the hiramasa (cured in the manner of pastrami and served atop a rye cracker) presented contrasting texture and approach. The surf clam and the bluefin continued this approach of contrasts. The first presentation of the surf clam was with a wonderful red aguachile while the bluefin crudo was accompanied by an excellent crisp and tangy slaw. Finally the surf clam returned as near-perfect schnitzel with tartar sauce.

The kangaroo tartare and purple clam would normally have come out next together. However, we’d asked for an additional order of percebes (goose neck barnacles) from the regular menu and a half portion (Sivan talked us down from a full) arrived in between. The kangaroo tartare itself did not seem changed from last October. However, where the previous had been served with charred eggplant mousse, this one came with a coriander-carrot puree that I might have liked even more. The percebes were an exciting adventure. Neither of us had ever had them before and so Sivan gave us a little demonstration of how to get the ugly bastards into our mouths. It’s a good idea to wear a bib for this part of the proceedings (and it’s a good idea not to sit next to me as I might possibly spray things onto the shoulders of neighbouring strangers). (Here’s a video of my friend enjoying one.) The percebes, we were told, came from a diver in Alaska.

Then emerged the purple clam, looking like a modernist painting. The canvas was green ramp sauce atop which was placed roasted local asparagus with purple clams and cubes of fermented rhubarb scattered around. Lovely to look at, even better to eat. I can’t remember if this came with bread or if we asked for some to mop the lovely sauce up with. And so to the large plate. Regrets about the fluke aside, this was just a wonderful dish. The smoked bbq goat, draped in recado negro both fell apart at a poke and maintained its toothsome goatiness. The polenta beignets meanwhile would have been a highlight on their own. Hard to pick between this and the goat we had last year.

The dessert quandary, as I said, was resolved for us by the fact that they gave us both. Neither white asparagus nor tahini may seem like the best ideas as gelato bases but please believe me when I say that both were outstanding.

Oh yes, my friend had one non-alcoholic drink (a cold brewed oolong that she enjoyed very much) and I had several glasses of excellent wine. I left it to Ori to select them for me and enjoyed them all greatly; especially the Cara, a skin-contact/orange wine from Austria.

For a look at everything we ate and drank, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for more on service, price etc. and to see what’s coming next on the restaurant review front.

So, the comps. In addition to the three glasses I ordered (of which I was only charged for two), I was given two more pours of other wines at the beginning and end of the meal. We were also comped the tahini gelato. With said comps plus the half-portion of percebes, tax and tip the total came to just about $320 or $160/head. This is by no means a cheap meal. But, again, I think you’d be hard-pressed to eat as well for this price in most American cities, leave alone in Manhattan. It’s not just the quality of the ingredients, specifically the fact that so much top-notch seafood is involved. There is nothing superfluous on any plate. Each component is both perfectly complementary to the main feature and prepared with the same meticulous care. Almost every plate is simultaneously a masterpiece of preparation and of not doing anything more with an ingredient than is needed.

And the atmosphere in the restaurant—loud though it is—is great as well. I’m not sure what it would be like at one of the few tables but at the long counter, with interaction with neighbours, servers and the proprietors—who will be happy to chat with you about ingredients and to help you choose wines even if you haven’t argued about food together for 20 years online—it’s really quite wonderful. I wish we could eat here every month. If we lived in New York, we would (and we could actually afford to).

Alright, what’s next? Now that my last New York report is finally done, it’s time for my last Seoul report. That will drop tomorrow (as we very young and hip people say). Next up from the Twin Cities will be a report on dinner at Hai Hai, where we are scheduled to eat today.