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ABC Kitchen, Restaurant Week NYC Summer 2017


With the memory of my last visit to ABC Kitchen still fresh in my mind (February),
I promptly booked a table to see what they have prepared for the Summer Restaurant Week.



 ABC Kitchen is one of three  Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants located in the beautiful ABC Carpet & Home.  The other two are ABC Cocina and the plant based ABCV,  all are great and worth a try.  Cocina and Kitchen offer a special Restaurant Week (semiannual even where almost 400 restaurants offer three-course Prix-fixe deals for lunch- $29, and dinner -$42) menu.  I try to book early as some of the more sought out restaurants fill up rather fast.

With today's overused buzzwords like sustainable, locally sourced, curated, being part of the menu, one would expect a certain level of pretentiousness, but this restaurant seems to have a good balance of very high quality of food and a relaxed atmosphere.  I found the service to be welcoming, pleasant and the organic, local and pure ingredients are anything but pretentious.  No silly gimmicks here, just really good food.



Loved the flower arrangements, so delicate and beautiful.








The wood tables and the bar were made from fallen trees.












The menu comes clipped onto a cardboard.


This is the Restaurant Week menu


The back of the menu acknowledges the sources of all that is served or used at the restaurant, a very nice touch in my opinion.


I am a huge fan of their bread which comes from the Sullivan Street Bakery, one of my favorite bakeries in NYC. 


 I chose the tomato and watermelon gazpacho as my starter, even though I am not usually a big fan of cold soup.  Curiosity got the better of me, but I was really happy with the decision.  The soup was delicious, the combination of tomato and watermelon worked very nicely, and there was a slight pickled tone to it, which I liked.



Here is a closer look at the beautiful color of the gazpacho.


My mom really enjoyed the kale salad with lemon, Serrano chilies and mint, even though she accidentally bit into one of the chilies.


My main entree was this lovely salmon salad with bibb lettuce, veggies and buttermilk-herb vinaigrette.  Perfectly cooked and delicious salmon.


 Mom got the grilled portobello sandwich with arugula, parmesan, jalapenos and rosemary mayo.  Coincidentally, this entree was also offered during the winter Restaurant Week.  It was delicious.


My son, who wanted to be a bit more adventurous, veered off the Restaurant Week menu and ordered their wood oven roasted Maine lobster with oregano and lemon-chili vinaigrette.  The lobster was delicious, but really very little food for $40.


 Desserts are always a strong point at ABC Kitchen, so we were really looking forward to trying this chocolate ganache cake with toasted marshmallow icing.  It was just wonderful, moist, and sweet but not overwhelming.






The other dessert was this salted caramel ice cream sundae with candied peanuts and popcorn, whipped cream and hot fudge.  I had this during my last visit, loved the combination of the fudge with the salted caramel ice cream so much, I ordered it again.








ABC Kitchen
35 East 18th Street

Open for lunch and dinner

Joanna


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