abcV Awards

abcV Restaurant Review:

About the chefs & décor: If you think that all vegetarian, vegetable-forward restaurants serve fake-meat versions of chicken and beef dishes, abcV will be a healthy eye-opener. Jean-Georges Vongerichten together with chef de cuisine Neal Harden, formerly of Pure Food and Wine, create an homage to vegetables, pure and simple, at Vongerichten’s third outpost in the ABC Carpet & Home building. Walk through ABC Kitchen and take a right before you arrive at ABC Cocina, and you’ll find a bright, airy cafeteria-like setting, with an open kitchen and clean white and green décor. The setting suits the menu very well.

Likes: creativity in vegetable dishes is unusual and welcome; combination of flavors is intriguing.
Dislikes: some of the dishes can seem very bland, even if they are pretty on the plate. Note that if you are not used to vegetarian cuisine, the tab will be pricey as you try to satisfy your hunger without protein. (But after all Vongerichten was GAYOT's 2016 Best Restaurateur of the Year.)

Food & Drinks: You might try a roasted beet salad, with avocado purée, chili aïoli, pickles and lovage, or a warm green plate of sunchoke purée to start. Larger options, although they don’t really seem that much bigger, might be spinach spaghetti with broccoli, kale, preserved lemon and Parmigiano, or beluga lentils with yams and broccoli stems. Beverages range from organic and alcoholic (wines are from the West Coast as well as Europe, with beer and cider mainly from New York) to tonic “vibrations” with instructive names like “joy” and “grounding” or a selection of organic juice blends. The chef’s tasting menu provides a sampling of the mostly unfamiliar and completely sustainable vegetable platings. Save room for dessert: homemade sorbets are the perfect finish to this vegetable parade, along with organic coffees paired with almond milk, naturally.