Aretah Ettarh Reimagines Gramercy Tavern’s Legacy

"Across its 31-year history I find Gramercy Tavern to balance the timely and the timeless: a flower‑decked dining room and a crackling wood‑fired grill anchor a legacy that stretches from Tom Colicchio to Michael Anthony (his 2002 tasting menu with dishes like duck breast with corn, peaches, and okra, and lobster salad with pole beans, pickled ramps, and snow peas is an exemplar). I see Aretah Ettarh as the restaurant’s chef de cuisine and a central force—trained at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, she worked every station before shaping seasonal, thoughtful dishes such as hay‑smoked potato gnocchi with almonds and basil (later yielding to Swiss chard and mushrooms), a pan‑roasted Caraflex cabbage with kimchi‑coated sesame seeds and chives topped with garlic‑peanut chile crunch and housemade Kewpie‑style mayo with fresh cabbage and nori, and a creamy freekeh with carrot puree seasoned with ginger and lemongrass, oblique‑cut and shaved carrots, fried leeks, chives, and tender Brussels sprout leaves. I often assemble the “perfect” order here—beet and carrot salad with roasted pistachio puree, seasoned burrata, pistachio salsa verde, dandelion greens, pistachio oil, and orange zest; the seafood platter (oysters raw with rhubarb mignonette and roasted with herb aioli, fluke with cucumber and sesame, and royal red shrimp with kohlrabi); Elysian Fields lamb with seasonal beets, mushrooms, and sorrel; golden tilefish with royal red shrimp in a carrot‑coconut sauce with butter‑glazed freekeh; or the tavern pasta, such as pea and spinach agnolotti in white wine sauce with black pepper–butter glaze, snap peas, sunflower sprouts, and Grana Padano—each dish feeling “Very GT”: simple in appearance but packing a lot of flavor, rooted in seasonality, and continually pushing to stay modern and fresh." - Kat Kinsman