The vegetables of 10 Downing Street | Review: Cafe Clover

I’m not saying they did it on purpose, but I started to have a feeling that Cafe Clover had sat us in the section of the restaurant – the wedge-shaped part where, outside, Downing Street abuts 6th Avenue – reserved for the good looking young people. Surely some mistake! It did mean I spent some of my dinner wondering whether these notably youthful types ate out, like me, pretty much every night, and if so, how they could they afford it. I keep forgetting that there are app-building wizards, tech startup geniuses and junior heiresses aplenty in this city. I don’t really know what Periscope is; one of these guys probably invented it.

Banish thoughts of the morose vegan cafés of your past, with their green cakes and ineradicable air of soup/armpits

My suspicion is that New York must have more veg-only restaurants per capita than any other major city (outside India…?), and more seem to be emerging every week. And banish thoughts of the morose vegan cafés of your past, with their green cakes and ineradicable air of soup/armpits: there’s a new wave of clever, passionate kitchens making inventive, exciting, tasty meat-free dishes. No longer is the vegetarian option the carb-heavy, flavour-free endurance test it once was – nor is it restricted to the omnipresent kale salad. Cafe Clover is as lively and buzzy as the meat-heavy French bistros its décor recalls and plays on (all distressed mirrors, blue-grey leather banquettes and low-level lighting, it’s the clean, comfortable, winter-toned obverse of that French-style red-and-gilt-and-heavy-drapes look). Like other newish, similarly-minded New York openings Dirt Candy and Fat Radish, and Semilla, the “vegetable forward” restaurant in the wilds of Brooklyn, Cafe Clover is digging things over.

That’s not to say it’s entirely about the vegetables here; there are fish and meat dishes, too, including a burger, though to deliberately come to a pro-vegetarian place and order that would seem to me obtuse (and this is from someone who not infrequently orders dishes with at least one ingredient I don’t like, just to check whether I still don’t). And, funnily enough, there is a kale salad on the menu at Cafe Clover, but it’s the least impressive of five small plates we start with. An ivory lentil “risotto” topped with shaved black truffle, is substantially better, the grains nutty and with a unique vegetal crunch neither as gritty as rice nor as yielding as lentil, almost like tiny dice of clarified onion. Celeriac and rutabaga with pistachio and cumin breathes new life into the remoulade (and demonstrates you don’t need bacon to make it interesting). I strayed from the strictly vegetarian path for a dish of shaved Hamachi with yuzu and sunchoke artichokes, and was glad I had; Hamachi is that rare raw fish that holds its own against a strong sweet citrus, and the yuzu gel balanced rather than swamped it.

Also slightly reassuring is that the main courses at vegetarian places are, as often in non-veg-only restaurants, can prove less innovative and interesting than the appetisers. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with a mahi mahi steak, cooked – like a terrific octopus starter – la plancha, giving its edges that irreplaceable umami-ish charring, but, like the poached halibut that comes with salsify, black lentils and a little caponata topping (pace my confession above, I just wanted to check I still don’t like black olives… nope), it felt a bit like fancied up café food rather than a high-end restaurant dish. Nonetheless, each dish was well-constructed and well-flavoured – though both fish perhaps a shade too well-done.

We are emerging from the season where Brussels sprouts have turned up, expectedly or otherwise, on myriad dishes

What’s perhaps most impressive is that there isn’t a replication of ingredients here. Elsewhere, as spring shyly broaches New York, restaurants are getting ready to adorn every conceivable dish with baby leeks, or those strange wet furled fern-tips; we are emerging from the season where Brussels sprouts have turned up, expectedly or otherwise, on myriad dishes whether or not they seem necessary. At Cafe Clover, parsnip appears on only one dish, beets on another, salsify on a third – there’s little crosspollination, so you don’t have to worry (unless you fancy a cauliflower steak as a main) about ordering the same flavours over and over. Nor are the vegetarian plates bulked out with rice, pasta or potato (in fact the latter only appears as a side dish, an olive oil purée). This is confident, intelligent, considerate cooking. I came away sated, and feeling that I’d eaten well in the best sense of that word: healthily as well as substantially. And thanks to that seating plan, I left under the brief and happy delusion that I was younger, handsomer and better-off than I really am. Clover gives you luck, indeed. C

Cafe Clover, 10 Downing Street, NY 10014, USA
+1 212-675 4350; cafeclovernyc.com