I really love books written by chefs about their adventures in food. Anthony Bourdain was my first and made me fall in love with reading about the inner workings of restaurants and chefery. I read somewhere that HIS favorite food book was Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton and I quickly made the purchase on my Nook (ps- I love that thing… never thought I’d want anything besides a real book, but I have read more in the 6 months I’ve had it than the entire last 3 years combined).
I absolutely loved the book, and was especially excited to read the section about her starting a restaurant in NYC. A restaurant I had been meaning to go to for quite some time: Prune.
We were going to go for Valentine’s Day, but then I was called out to LA for a work meeting, so we had to cancel that reservation. A few weeks later, on an idle weekend with nothing to do, we made our way down to the East Village and put our names on the list for brunch. They don’t take reservations for brunch, and I was expecting a long wait. We decided we would stroll the neighborhood for a bit, but when they told us it would be just 45 minutes, we made it a quick stroll. We came back 20 minutes later and were seated less than 10 minutes after that. Lovely!
What I first noticed was that Prune is SMALL. Even smaller than what I imagined from what she described in the book.
We started our brunch with cocktails. While Prune is known for their Bloody Mary’s, I don’t drink vodka (long story) and I’m allergic to peppers… So that pretty much eliminates me from the Bloody pool. I went with some refreshing, citrusy cocktail that I can’t remember a thing about, other than that I really enjoyed it.
Mike, on the other hand, was all over trying one of these famous Bloodys. The menu of Bloody Mary’s is quite big and quite original (scroll down to the bottom here to see). Mike chose the Chicago Matchbox, with homemade lemon vodka, pickled brussels sprouts, baby white turnips, caperberries, green beans, and radishes.
It was beautiful, and he was a big fan. He never really drinks Bloody Mary’s, but after this one, he has been trying more and more.
For noms, Mike got the steak and eggs, which was a 7 oz. prime newport steak, grilled with parsley shallot butter and 2 eggs (he went sunny-side up) witha toasted english muffin and potatoes rosti. This was SO good. The steak alone could rival any of the best steak restaurants in the city. Everything was cooked perfectly.
I chose the dutch style pancake. It was one individual pancake cooked in the oven, with pears, served with canadian bacon and potatoes rosti. This thing was DELICIOUS. The pancake was super fluffy with a bit of crisp on the outside. It was sweet, but not too sweet, and had great flavor with the batter and the pear. I thoroughly enjoyed this… probably more than any other pancake I’ve ever had.
We walked away from Prune incredibly impressed. The atmosphere was great, the drinks were great, and the food was great. I love brunch, but find a lot of times it’s all the same. Here, it was brunch anew. I cannot wait to go back and try more!
Total Nom Points: 8 out of 10
