Restaurant review: dirty witch summons the ghost of Blanca
Whenever I eat at a restaurant with a tasting menu – which is several times a month and would be several times a week if I reviewed them all – I wonder how I would feel about the same food if a normal restaurant served it. If I order à la carte, does everything taste equally good? Would my check be lower? Would I still feel like I swallowed a couch cushion?
The closest I’ve come to answering these questions is eating at Dirty witch, a five-month-old East Village Italian restaurant owned by two of the founders of Roberta’s and Blanca. Roberta’s, of course, is the Bushwick restaurant known for its artfully charred pizzas, its Tiki Disco parties, and the radio station that broadcasts programs about eating food from its backyard. Blanca is a 12-seat bunker in the same backyard that has been closed since the start of the pandemic. Inside, the compound’s swirling rock festival atmosphere gave way to the disciplined creativity of tasting menus that lasted nearly 30 courses and cost $200 or more.
Under the direction of Carlo Mirarchi, the chef and one of the owners, Blanca’s kitchen put together two or three bite dishes that were often stunning, both for the quality of their main ingredients and for the unexpected twists the kitchen gave them. Agnolotti would burst with molten taleggio turned green-black from pulverized phytoplankton that tasted like the bottom of the ocean. Dry-aged duck breast would be slowly grilled over Japanese charcoal and served with beetroot mole as earthy and smoky as an underground fire.
There are plans to open Blanca again one day; meanwhile, a bit of his spirit lives on in Foul Witch. The first incarnation was Foul Witch by Blanca, a sit-down restaurant that Mr. Mirarchi and Brandon Hoy, his business partner, ran for four days. the Frisian art fair in New York in 2018. Foul Witch then went to sleep. When it woke up, in January, it was on Avenue A.
The name comes from a line-in the 1985 cult fantasy film “Legend” (and for that some play “The Tempest”). According to the restaurant’s website“Foul Witch offers haunting Italian cuisine and an uninhibited natural wine list in an intimate Gothic setting.”
The narrow restaurant doesn’t look particularly Gothic, save for the alternating colors cast by a jellyfish lamp at the end of the bar and some silhouettes on the kitchen wall that may or may not represent goat heads. But often, under Sam Pollheimer, the chef de cuisine, the cooking evokes the spirit of the older restaurant, in a simpler, streamlined way.
The agnolotti bleeding black blood return in a much less ghostly form, this time with more taleggio than plankton; tossed with tender English peas, asparagus juice and chive blossoms, they didn’t conjure up any frightening visions at all, unless you dread cottage gardens in the Cotswolds.
Always served in primi portions, the pasta at Foul Witch is usually a bit quirky, sometimes in a way you might want to quibble with. I wish the pasta sheets used to make veal tortillas were rolled a bit thinner; the creamy filling of whipped sweetbreads would have been even more impressive than it already was.
But the spaccatelli (another name for strozzapreti) with a sauté of “old game bird” (squab and duck) helped me remember how much flavor Blanca used to get out of his dry-aged meat. The dish also taught me a new ingredient: red walnuts. Sliced into the ragù, they were sweeter and softer than typical walnuts, and along with shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano, compensated for the intensity that aging had imparted to the meat.
There’s also a far-reaching flavor in the duck prosciutto. It is made in the restaurant, just like the testa, which is served on a preheated plate and melts into a deliciously oozing mass of soft pink meat and softer white fat. You may want to spread it – or rather pour it, since it’s almost runny – over some Foul Witch focaccia or Roberta’s bread. These two are a study in opposites; the crusty, chewy bread requires some effort from your jaw, while the tender focaccia almost dissolves on your tongue. They’re both very good, one of the benefits of eating on a branch of the Roberta’s family tree.
You can see the flames in the wood-burning oven from most places in the dining room. This is used to prepare most main dishes and they get a distinctive rustic flavor from the smoke and high heat. A whole roasted John Dory has been on the menu lately; compared to the whole fish you’re likely to find in downtown Italian restaurants, John Dory is so much sweeter and better, you can’t believe it’s not served more often. Foul Witch hangs it by its tail next to the oven to dispel the cold from the refrigerator before sliding it into the oven. Then clams are added to the pan, almost too small to eat but full of juices that turn into a delicious broth of green garlic and olive oil.
You don’t often see whole fish on a tasting menu; it’s too big, too bony, too cluttered. My group of four happily ripped into it.
The kitchen has a charcoal grill when he needs to direct the heat more precisely. For example, it is used to sear a grilled pork collar, almost as red as sirloin steak and laced with fennel pollen.
For dessert, Foul Witch has a plate of sliced citrus fruits. I’ve had it with tangerines and Kishu tangerines, all with the skin still on. They are dressed with olive oil and carrot juice, then sprinkled with salt, toasted breadcrumbs and serrano pepper. This might as well be a salad. Either way, it’s as challenging as it is rewarding. You won’t confuse it with a dish served elsewhere.
Foul Witch is not a cheap restaurant, but the a la carte menu makes it more flexible than Blanca. The meal left me with two competing desires. I wish I could go to Blanca again. But I also wish more restaurants with tasting menus in New York would open a place like Foul Witch. Too many good ideas are locked up in little rooms where too few people can experience them.
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