Went to iCi in Fort Greene with La Doug for Brooklyn Restaurant Week.
A la carte:
New York Magazine-lauded chicken liver schnitzel consisted of three hunks of organ clothed in panko and deep fried, served with a dollop of bland aioli and some overly sweet caramelized onions. Nice crunch, a little oily, and not bad -- but I'd rather have 2nd Ave. Deli's chopped chicken liver on rye with red onion (R.I.P.) or Balthazar's chicken liver foie gras mousse. Our 2 glasses of Raventos cava ($9/glass, bottle retails for $12) tasted day-old.
3 course prix fixe, $20.06 each:
Apps -- Doug's thinly sliced fluke carpaccio with mint shrank in an acidic pool of lemon juice. My watercress salad with pickled onions and beet fragments was simple and straightforward, no complaints.
Mains -- Overcooked and underseasoned sliced duck breast dominoes were splayed over a thirst-inducing salt-potato pancake. It was garnished with a couple of afterthought mustard greens and a pair of dookie-imposter stewed prunes. Doug's skate was swimming in brown butter, also too salty and a little burnt, served with the same mustard greens and a scattered assortment of indeterminate diced veg.
Desserts -- Chocolate cake dessert was an enormous wedge of dark chocolate soft-cooked batter. Translucent glutinous rice lent coconut rice pudding a lovely texture, with an elegant top note of kaffir lime leaf chiffonade (though the garnish is kind of indigestible and gets stuck in your teeth -- perhaps a little kaffir lime zest instead would be better?).
Service was slammed and it took a while for us to get our check (totally understandable considering it was restaurant week). The room is quite elegantly done, with a fireplace, white walls, low ceilings, and sexy light sconces; but the quaint picture is marred by the collegiate servers in low rise jeans and tank tops. The menu looks so promising, but the restaurant is ultimately betrayed by its own Brooklyn nonchalance. iCi seems to suffer from a malaise shared by several Cobble Hill and Park Slope restaurants -- it's good in theory, uses all the right ingredients, has all kinds of good intentions front of house, but the final product still seems amateurish.
A restaurant only accessible from the G train would have to be really fucking good to warrant the trip. iCi is not that good, but if you live in the area and don't have other options, it's probably good enough.
iCi
246 Dekalb Ave. @ Vanderbilt Ave.
718-789-2778
G to Clinton-Washington
mmmm, chopped liver. passover starts tonight, my time for eating copious amounts of chopped liver to console myself about the exodus from Egypt.
I can't believe they can still call them kaffir limes. N.... limes anyone?
a. wow, i had no idea. i'm going to use the word makrut from now on.
I do not know why the “kaffir” lime is called so, or if there is any connection between the fruit and the South Africans so why would a logical person find offense at you calling a kaffir lime by it's name? I doubt many people (apart from the Thai) would understand you if you requested a "makrut lime" (although it does so deliciously like the Thai and Vietnamese word for "mangosteen"). Don't make life hard for yourself!
NB. The following:
Theory 1. Kaffir, originally an Arabic word for unbeliever, is used by whites in South Africa as a derogatory term for blacks (this would have started around the time of the Boer War: the kaffir lime was around before then). The name kaffir lime derives from Asia rather than South Africa, perhaps from Indian Muslims who encountered the fruit as an import from Thailand and Sri Lanka, where non-Muslims predominated. Nevertheless, the term is offensive to some, and the Thai name, makrut, is sometimes used as a substitute.
Theory 2. It seems so much more plausible to suppose that Kaffir lime is a corruption of the eponymous Keiffer Lime, that I spent a little time looking for a botanist called Kieffer.
It is the case that Kieffer was a biologist operating in the early years of the 20th century, who did indeed name some cultivars - a variety of pear for example, but I did not readily find a connection between the lime
(actually a citrus) and the man.
i love that EDOW readers are so knowledgable. i'm serious. i love you people.
TI, i bet your theories are right. though i went to uc berkeley, i'm not a PC nutjob. however, the fact that the swastika was originally a hindu symbol doesn't make me feel any more comfortable with it. i'm going to do a little more research when i'm off the job clock.
i wonder what other foods have mean-spirited names -- pasta puttanesca, strozzapretti, pad kee mao...i feel a story pitch coming on...
and did i miss an opportunity to eat mangosteen in adelaide? i really hope not...
i think ici is a lot better for brunch than for dinner. my wife has been there once for dinner, hated it but has been there for brunch 3 times. no complaints yet.
I've seen Jew's Ear soup is offered on the menu in Chinatown restaurants. I was about to add that I had no idea why it's called that, but suddenly remembered the fearsome power of the web.
From Wikipedia:
"Auricularia auricula-judae (syn. Auricularia auricula, Hirneola auricula-judae) is commonly known as the Jew's Ear Fungus or Judas's Ear Fungus, the name from which it derives the "judae" in its scientific name, or as the Jelly Ear Fungus. This jelly fungus is conspicuously ear shaped, dark brown to black in color with a rubbery texture, and most often found on dead elder trees but also on elms.
It was said that Judas hanged himself on an elder tree, which is the origin of the name."
Dee-Licious!
i had a conversation with a chef at ici who told me that pretty much everything is bathed in and cooked in butter, sticking true to a french culinary technique. but i guess this also means not everying is good just because it's dripping in butter.
If there were mangosteens in Adelaide, I'd be sitting in a corner with purple-stained fingertips and empty shells strewn everywhere. I would definitely NOT be in Boston!
i am so sick of the word aioli. i'm just waiting for some celeb to name their kid that.
I really wish that I would have read that you were going here prior to you needing to review it, I have been taken there THREE times by THREE different people loving it, I have never had a great experience there. For better food head to "Moutard" on fifth, acessible by many trains and consistently good.
"...if you live in the area and don't have other options, it's probably good enough..." So, I live across the street, and it's my favorite restaurant in the neighborhood. That said, I agree that brunch is the best time to go: get the french toast and the latte. Sit outside in the shade if you can: the inside gets very loud with the crying of French expat yuppie babies.