Foul Witch, Reviewed: An Unnervingly Sensuous Restaurant from the Roberta’s Team | The New Yorker
"On a lower block of Avenue A that feels neither hip nor interesting, a wine-focused restaurant from the folks behind Roberta’s opened nearly a year ago and, while the long, narrow, high‑ceilinged dining room reads like a hallway to nowhere—with rough brick walls, exposed ductwork, and an open kitchen that feels startup-garage haphazard rather than artfully gritty—the food and wine more than compensate. I’m grateful for early winter sunsets and low interior lighting because the complimentary bread and butter alone (crisp, oil‑slick focaccia; a bien cuit sour baguette; and an enormous, yolk‑yellow butter salted like the sea) is dangerously addictive. Chef and co‑owner Carlo Mirarchi’s Blanca tasting‑menu DNA is obvious in the menu’s inventiveness and unselfconscious use of luxury ingredients, but here the food is à la carte and gloriously sensual: pawpaw rounds bathed in cream under a slumping scoop of Golden Kaluga caviar; tortellini filled with veal sweetbreads in a golden broth brightened by an Amaretto butterscotch note; a charcoal‑grilled wagyu filet with an earthy sunchoke béarnaise. The wine list is global and deliberately odd—I was enraptured by a Slovenian pinot grigio described as “entirely un‑green,” and on another night fell for a gravelly Ryšák Czech blend—and the kitchen’s occasional daring failures (a sulfurous charred caraflex cabbage in a pork‑blood sauce) feel like experiments I’m willing to forgive. There’s also a secret, carryover dish—stracciatella spooned over brick‑red ’nduja, the so‑called “Fire & Ice”—that became a viral hit, was pulled from the menu to curb demand, and remains a memorably violent, voluptuous indulgence for those in the know; overall, the food is lush, almost libidinous, pursuing suppleness and surrender more than slickness or polish." - Helen Rosner
