Pure Food and Wine

Pure Food and Wine only serves raw food --- nothing processed, nothing packaged, nothing cooked over 118 degrees --- and the prices are hefty enough to make you plotz, as our Jewish grandmother would say. We can't say a dinner there made us any healthier, but sitting in the Gramercy restaurant's back garden, sipping organic wine, celebrating some good news, enjoying the beautiful food and beautiful people . . . it was the best meal we'd had in a while.  

We started with spring greens and lemon salad, a medley of textures; a bowl of house-cured olives with fennel and orange; and a "cheese" plate made from cashews, some milky, others spicy. Everything was seasoned so delicately, so deftly. Rather than let the ingredients assert themselves, the chefs proded and poked them, adding freshly ground magic. Any worries about being handed a few crudites were eradicated by the first course.    

While seemingly everyone around us ordered the lasagna, we bucked the trend with squash blossoms and a cauliflower-stuffed tomato. Both lovely, although the blossoms were downright chilly (everything else had been served room temperature or warmer). Each bite sent out a squiggle of cheese, which mixed with the tomato "cream" sauce, but this was the weakest dish we ate there. As for our other main, the cauliflower had been flavored with garam masala, lending the dish a warm complexity. Next time, though, we'll try the lasagna. Lesson learned: sometimes being lemming-like is worth it.      

As desserts, the salted caramel chocolate tart had caramel made from pecans, dark chocolate ganache, and vanilla cream, but the not-so-secret key ingredient was the salt. Suddenly the dish had a maturity. And the mille feuille featured fewer than a thousand layers of mint, unfortunately, but had exquisite bits of berries. Plus, they were both so gosh-darn pretty.

Did we miss the fat and sugar and unprononcable preservatives we normally eat? Nope, we sure didn't. Would we want to eat like this every day? Nope, we sure wouldn't. (For one thing, we have to pay our rent and keep our cat in wet food.) But the meal was a special treat in every way, and that's what makes it memorable. 

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