The Humble Gourmand

The Red Cat
227 10th Ave.
New York, NY 10011
(212)242-1122

Web site
Menu

Lunch: Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 2:30 p.m.
Dinner: Monday through Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m.
Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. to midnight
Sunday: 4:30 to 10:30 p.m.

Reservations: Accepted and recommended

Cuisine: Mediterranean-New American

Appetizers $9-$16, entrees $20-$34, desserts $8-$9

Walking into The Red Cat, you get the sense that the experience will bring you the comfort and space that Americans sometimes come to expect from dining out, but with the sophistication and allure of food and service that’s expected from high-end establishments. Situated on the fringe of New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, The Red Cat serves all of it up, and flawlessly so. Think bed and breakfast and a Chelsea art gallery, somehow intertwined.

From the first step in the door, a long and deep bar beckons you. Bowls of radishes and salt are a welcome pre-dinner treat.

The Red Cat’s walls, covered in wide planks of red- and white-painted wood, hail from old barns in Pennsylvania. Its tables — large and blanketed in white tablecloths — give it a formal touch. Intricate tin lanterns with candles flickering hang from the ceilings and create a dim, lulling affect on dinner. But the unobtrusive yet completely attentive service makes dining there a refreshing change from the many New York restaurants that try too hard with design and pomposity.

As with the simplistic ambiance, the menu, too, shares this quality, by picking the best of ingredients and turning out in melt-in-your-mouth goodness without shaking things up too much.

As aforementioned, the bar beckons — but on a more recent Sunday evening, a group of three friends and I took advantage of this little jewel’s mezzanine tables. We reveled in the braised and grilled octopus appetizer that sat atop a mound of tomato and zucchini. The braising gave the sea creature a soft yet dense texture, perfected with grill marks and a charred, but not burnt, taste to match.

The wagyu beef carpaccio, with horseradish and shaved savoy, was a bit uninspired, but the fresh ingredients were well noted.

But the entrees, placed across the table, were each uniquely delicious. The grilled tuna steak, with a fennel puree and aged balsamic, was expertly grilled and sweetly flavored. Along with wilted romaine and pumpkin seed pesto, the double-cut pork chop was rich and fulfilling.

The Prime New York shell steak, grilled to medium rare beauty, paired nicely with Yukon gold potatoes and aioli. Every Sunday, the chef serves up a suckling pig special, this time served tenderly shredded and spiced with tomatoes and garlic.

The Red Cat’s menu changes often, mostly to use seasonal ingredients, and it truly adds to the experience, though I was sad to note the disappearance of a delicious steak tartare topped with a quail egg and the pomegranate-roasted quail, both previous loves, now nowhere to be found.

The wine list is diverse and includes many affordable bottles beginning in the $30-range and peaking at $236. It’s organized into “soft reds,” “earthy” ones, “spicy reds,” and the “full-bodied” genre. Whites get categories of “clean,” “floral” and “rich.”

There are many restaurants in New York that claim to be something. The Red Cat allows you to make it something you want it to be. For me, it’s delicious food, impeccable service, and a true neighborhood restaurant in a city filled with them, making this space feel somewhat magical, somewhere to which one clamors to return.

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