Yes, I’ve posted reports before on restaurant meals eaten a long time before; this post is, however, a signal achievement for me: it’s a report on a meal eaten not just nine months ago but at a restaurant that closed eight months ago: Foul Witch in Manhattan. There is no utility whatsoever to this report. You are welcome.
You may recall that the missus and I were in New York City for a weekend last October (I’ve previously reported on two meals from that trip, at L’Industrie and Theodora). We had wanted to eat a nice Italian meal on that trip and when I’d consulted some trusted friends who live in the city, Foul Witch came up as one of the few places at the intersection of our budget, desired quality of food and drink, and the likelihood of our being able to get a reservation. And so I made that reservation after drinks with a bunch of old food forum friends at Bar Goto in the East Village, the missus and I walked a couple of blocks to meet another old friend and his partner at Foul Witch. Here’s how it went.
I had been a little surprised at the time of making the reservation at how easy it had been to get a table but had put that down to the fact that we were eating on a Sunday evening. The restaurant, from the proprietors of Roberta and the erstwhile Blanca in Brooklyn, had received very strong reviews in the two years it had been open and I expected it would be full enough when the evening rolled around. Well, it wasn’t empty but the narrow and dark dining room was very far from full. With hindsight this was a harbinger of the announcement of the closure in just over a month. But the food certainly wasn’t: it was a very good meal.
Our friends had prepped us: get the testa, get the pastas, avoid anything on the menu that seems like it might be sweet. We mostly managed to follow this advice. Alas, we did not get the testa. The missus and I were very much in favour but we were getting everything to share and one of the other members of our party was really not enthused about it. And so we passed in the hope of eating it on a future trip [cue small violin]. But it’s not like we were disappointed with the small plates we did get to open. These included two orders of very good Sesame Focaccia with Cultured Butter, which we used also to mop up the outstanding Fire & Ice (stracciatella draped over n’duja). Also excellent were two salads: the simple Dressed Chicories which let excellent ingredients do most of the talking and the slightly more constructed Celery ‘Alla Romana”, which featured long strips/shreds of crisp celery with anchovy and long shavings of pecorino. Alongside these cold plates was a bowl of creamy Polenta topped with a goodly amount of Maine uni. Also excellent.
On to the pastas. We got all four on the menu. Three were filled, one was not. Three were excellent, one merely good. My favourite of the three filled pastas was the Sacchetti (with lupini clams and abalone); but the Cappelletti (with black futsu pumpkin, buffalo milk butter and prosciutto) was not far behind. The not-filled Spaccatelli (with muscovy duck and aged parmesan) was on par with the sacchetti. The only one that disappointed somewhat was the Veal Tortellini. The tortellini themselves were very good but they were sitting in an amaretto sauce, which if we’d thought about it at time of ordering we would have probably guessed was going to be sweet. Well, it was sweet to the point of being a little cloying.
All of this turned out to be more than enough food for four adults and so we had no regrets about having passed on the very expensive lamb and beef mains from their wood-burning oven. We did not, however, pass on dessert. There were three on the menu and we got two of them. Both the Sake Lees Cake and the unlikely-sounding Culantro Ice Cream were very good.
Oh yes, drinks. Having already consumed cocktails at Bar Goto we didn’t make too many inroads into their natural wine list. One of our friends had a glass of the Barreneche “Zig”, a Chenin/Sauvignon Blanc blend, and the other had two glasses of the Markus Altenburger “Cric”, a Blaufränkisch. I had a glass of an excellent orange wine, the Georgia Marini “Zero8”.
For a look at the restaurant and to see everything we ate and drank, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
Service was very good: friendly, professional, informed and, all in all, a reminder of how short most high-end restaurants in the Twin Cities fall in this department. Cost? $340 before tip. Which brings me to another Twin Cities comparison. I noted at the end of my review this week of our dinner at Dario in Minneapolis in February that the price of that meal was on par with our dinner at Foul Witch (keeping in mind that we ordered more alcohol at Foul Witch). Setting aside the fact that the Foul Witch meal was far superior, I have to wonder about the cost parity. I don’t pretend to know a lot about high-end restaurant economics but my understanding is that rent is one of the biggest drivers of cost; and it’s hard to believe that rent anywhere in the Twin Cities is on par with that in Manhattan. Maybe I’m wrong about this or just don’t know about other things that drive costs higher in Minnesota.
I also don’t really know why Foul Witch closed. Well, I assume the fact that they went from being a hot ticket in 2023 (complete with two stars and a strong recommendation from Pete Wells in the Times and a rave review from Helen Rosner in The New Yorker) to an easy reservation in late-2025 had something to do with it; but on the strength of our meal it’s hard to account for that. Ah well. It would have been nice to eat there again but it’s not like there’s a shortage of good Italian food in New York.
Alright, my next restaurant report will be from Bombay in April. After that my last backlogged Twin Cities report from earlier in the year and another report from Seoul. And now that I’ve filed this posthumous report on Foul Witch, I may as well finish out the rest of my reports from that NY/NJ trip last October. I’ll get one more of those out next weekend as well. Tomorrow, however, I will have another booze review.