Our first meal in New York, six months ago, was at the incredible Blue Hill at Stone Barns. It seemed fitting then, that we plan our last meal to be at Blue Hill in the city. Although Stone Barns is now the more famous, the city location is actually the original Blue Hill restaurant, having opened in Greenwich Village in 2000. It’s a very cosy spot, located slightly below street level, making it a completely different experience to the expansive farm buildings of Stone Barns.
Just as with Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the food totally lives up to the hype and accolades, which sadly isn’t always the case. We had a pretty uninteresting meal at Momofuku Ko a couple of weeks before that was twice the price of this. So although the $95 four course menu isn’t exactly cheap, you are actually getting incredible value for money when the food is this good.
Ingredients still come from Blue Hill farm and other New York farms so it’s got that same genuine farm to table feel of Stone Barns. We kicked off with ‘Peppers and Peas’, a simple plate of just that but livened up with some smoked cheese and watercress – when the ingredients are this good, you don’t need much else.
Next was ‘This Morning’s Farm Egg’ with tomato chorizo, potato and garlic, followed by Blue Hill Farm chicken, with takrima leek, mustard and green apple. This was about as good as chicken gets. There was also time for a quick bonus course of squash nuggets, which looked almost identical to chicken nuggets on the outside but in fact had beautiful dark orange ‘898’ squash inside.
If you have the time and the budget we’d still recommend heading up to Blue Hill at Stone Barns for the full experience but if you want a taste of what it’s like then Blue Hill in the city does the job nicely. If you have more time, then just do both – they’re truly special restaurants.