No Meat, No Matter; Two Stars for Dirt Candy

[nagle for the ny times] cabbage at dirt candyKate's Joint raised the bar for American-vegetarian food when it opened in the East Village back in 1996. The restaurant closed earlier this year, but Dirt Candy is there to carry the Village's vegetarian torch. Dirt Candy is what Amanda Cohen calls vegetables, it's also the name of her restaurant she opened in 2008. The restaurant's website explains, "When you eat a vegetable you’re eating little more than dirt that’s been transformed by plenty of sunshine and rain into something that’s full of flavor: Dirt Candy."

In his two star review of the restaurant today, Pete Wells enjoys the food and the way humor plays a part in the Dirt Candy experience, "Since opening Dirt Candy in the East Village almost four years ago, the chef Amanda Cohen has been waging war on the “eat your vegetables” mind-set, using humor as one of her weapons." Cohen's sense of humor is found throughout the restaurant's website and menu, wine list included, where a sparkling wine on offer from the Veneto is described as, "A fresh, lively sparkling wine from Italy that dances on your face." "Humor is so integral to Ms. Cohen’s work," Wells writes, "that she may be the only chef in America who could publish her first cookbook in comic-book form and make the decision seem not just sensible but inevitable."

Writing a menu is never a simple task, and when the menu is completely void of an entire food group, a heightened level of creativity is called for to ensure seats will be filled on a nightly basis, even if there are only 18, as is the case at Dirt Candy. This creativity shows up at the restaurant in dishes like eggplant tiramisu and the cauliflower entree, where "Ms. Cohen gives cauliflower florets a long bath in maple smoke, dips them in cornflakes, fries them to a golden crisp and serves them on waffles." It's a playful twist on the chicken and waffles classic. There are a few misses on the menu, but, ultimately, Wells finds Cohen is "not adapting the vegetarian cuisine of some other culture. She is inventing her own."