A taste of the Bar Room at The Modern

As a prelude to the Arcade Fire concert at the opening of the High Line Festival, Connie, Nicky and I were wandering around the bleakly corporate area of Midtown near Radio City in desperate need of some good food. After much deliberating, we decided to pop into the Bar Room at the Modern to get a sampling of some of their interesting and beautifully presented dishes.

The Decor: (7/10)

Shot of interior courtesy of The Wandering Eater




The interior of the Modern is really quite pretty - clean lines, artfully placed plants and plenty of room around tables.
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The Food: (8.5/10)

Every dish on the menu is a small plate broken out into 3 sections: section I (primarily cold plates), section II (primarily hot plates) and section III (half sized entrees).




Roasted Long Island Duck Breast with peppercorn crusted apples and toasted pistachio-truffle dipping sauce ($16)
Since I'm slightly obsessed with duck, I ordered this dish of course and was so incredibly glad that I had. There's something about the combination of incredibly tender roasted duck and the crunchy tartness of apples that creates a nearly heavenly sensation. The toasted pistachio-truffle dipping sauce was just the icing on the cake and lent the dish a really mellow, earthly flavor.


Slow Poached Farm Egg In a Jar with maine lobster, roasted jerusalem artichokes and sea urchin froth ($17) Wow. There's not much else to say about this dish - you just really need to run out and get a few jars. There's been this craze surrounding egg dishes that I've totally bought into:

At Degustation:

Slowly Poached Egg with jamón serrano, chorizo, smoked cheese and rice cracker crusted asparagus

At Inoteca:

Truffled Egg Toast (photo courtesy of Kathryn)

At WD-50:

Carrot-Coconut "Sunny Side Up"

And the list goes on and on over at NYM's list of the top egg dishes of NYC

But back to the matter at hand:


Beer Braised Pork Belly with sauerkraut and ginger jus ($19)
Ah, pork belly... it's really hard to go wrong with this dish - I'm not a huge fan of sauerkraut but it really worked with the sweetness of the beer braised pork belly. Everything was perfectly cooked and everything on the plate served a purpose.



Roasted Garlic Gnocchi with wild mushroom, sage and crispy sweetbreads ($17)
Really tender, flavorful gnocchi and deliciously crunchy sweetbreads. The sage was also fried which lent a nice texture tot his dish.


Beignets with maple ice cream, caramel and mango marmalade ($10)
Ah, beignets... these were a bit too soft for my taste but the sauces more than made up for it. There's just something so deliciously decadent about swirling caramel around maple ice cream and topping it off with a big chunk of fried dough...
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