Review: Pearl & Ash, New York

Music can make or break a dining experience. I spent a week in Stockholm a while back, eating some of the finest food in Europe. At every mealtime I felt the urge to stab my eardrums with the pointy ends of the flatware. For some reason Swedes soundtrack dinner with Now That’s What I Call the Worst Music in The World 666. But at Pearl & Ash, the first thing I encountered was a waiter skipping along the bar to Soft Cell. Cute. And they had me at Duran Duran.

Pearl & Ash might be the definitive downtown, or at least Bowery, small plates restaurant. Yes, it’s the Trend That Will Not Die: those not-quite-tapas that invariably make you feel slightly fleeced when you realise how much you’ve spent. You can spend a little or a lot at Pearl & Ash, but they get the portions right – they’re genuinely big enough to share – and you’d have to be very greedy indeed to eat your way through more than, say, $60 of food.

A few days before visiting Pearl & Ash I’d been to Do or Dine in Brooklyn, which I now find myself recommending to everyone even though the food wasn’t consistent or in any way a knock out. I’ve been recommending it for the experience – the room, the music, the guy with the beard hanging out at the bar and the rest of the crowd, 75% of whom I’d happily sleep with. Or at least be halfway as cool as. The crowd at Pearl & Ash may not be as tragically hip as that, but the food is never anything less than solid, occasionally hitting notes that are deliriously high. And the room has a similar, if slightly more mainstream buzz. This is a seriously fun restaurant, with staff that appear to enjoy being in the room as much as the diners do. As far as relaxed, casual but sophisticated dining in New York City goes right now, Pearl & Ash is definitely up there.

Glass by glass the tone went from amyl B52s remix to David Sylvian

The room itself looks like its been designed by several different designers who only met on the day of construction. Some of it looks like a slick Chinese supper club, while the box shelving looks like the farm to table restaurant in a boutique hotel. Which is slightly odd, as Pearl & Ash is, at heart, a wine bar with a particularly good kitchen. The wine list is a knock out – one of the best in the city. We left our wine choices in the hands of the sommelier, who took us on quite the adventure – starting with the pink sherbet of a Bugey Cerdon sparkling rosé, moving onto a Günther Steinmetz riesling, a Domain FL Loire chenin blanc and then a rich, lush Faury Syrah (which I ordered again in lieu of a sticky, and then again instead of an espresso). Glass by glass the tone went from amyl B52s remix to David Sylvian.

While the schtick is small plates, the service structures your order more formally, which is pleasing indeed. We started with a cod and a mackerel dish, which were both… fine (the cod felt a little too vanilla and needed something greener and zestier to offset it; a surfeit of sauce made it more difficult to share). The mackerel came with wakame and currants, a novel twist on the usual gooseberry addition.

I could eat 20 on a pile of spaghetti and die happy right after

The evening reached the highpoint slap bang in the middle, with an octopus plate with sunflower seeds and shiso, and pork meatballs with shiitake, bonito and sopressata. The octopus was perfect – a bit of sous vide sorcery followed up with deep frying. The pork meatballs rival the Iberico presa at Ember Yard for the title of Most Delicious Things I’ve Eaten This year. They are perfectly sticky and salty, with a slightly Japanese-leaning taste of the sea, courtesy of the bonito. I could eat 20 on a pile of spaghetti and die happy right after.

There followed a wonderfully unsweet pudding of corn, raspberry chocolate and a fernet branca ice cream sandwich. I haven’t touched anything that has so much as been in the same room as a bottle of fernet branca since I acquainted myself with it at a milonga in Buenos Aires some years ago and lost my inhibitions, trousers and breakfast the following morning. But here it’s just a mild boozy affectation. Nice. Very nice indeed.

On the night I visited Pearl & Ash, there was one of the restaurant’s regular wine dinners going on at the big communal table in the back, which culminated in the host standing on top of the bar and opening a bottle of prosecco with the swipe of a sabre. Between that, the meatballs and the Simple Minds soundtrack, there’s a lot to love here. C

Pearl & Ash, 220 Bowery, New York, NY 10012 USA
212-837 2370; pearlandash.com