August

Jason's restaurant may be serving the most interesting food in Manhattan. Not interesting in the way Wendy described city food of late: "I went to one place and everything had foam - it looked like someone had spit on my duck." Rather, it's interesting for its simplicity, for the ability of his chefs to uncover the complexity of food flavor in the base ingredient, rather than trying to construct the nuances from a marriage of disparate foods. In that sense it's cuisine that's radical in the truest sense, exploring the root and source of food. The concept (as much as there is one; the tone of the place is more organic than contrived) is European dishes, prepared in the vernacular, the sort of things you can imagine a nineteenth century Basque farmer or Italian fisherman eating. The restaurant's name, in fact, is taken from the name for a type of onion, taking the metaphor of radical, or root, one step further. The staff on the floor is as interested in food as the kitchen staff, and if you have a question and they don't have an answer, you may find your waiter pulling a book from the small culinary library to look up an answer. I'm making it sound pretentious just by trying to write about it, and that's a great disservice to the ease and style with which Jason has pulled it all together. The success of August, from the decor to the food to the service to the satisfaction you feel at the end of your meal, is simply natural.