It had been several years since I had last eaten at Gramercy Tavern, but a return visit was long overdue now that Michael Anthony has taken over the kitchen and given the restaurant new life. And the last time I had chef Anthony’s cooking was also several years ago, way back when he was still cooking at my-favorite-restaurant-in-NY, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. So how appropriate it was, that upon entering the restaurant last night and walking up to the hostess’ station I was greeted with a “Hey! Long time no see!” from another familiar blast from the past- it was Sofia from Chikalicious! Apparently she left to join Gramercy’s staff over a year ago. I was still waiting for Jeannie to arrive, so we chatted for a bit and she seemed to be doing really well, smiling as big as ever, so that was great to see.

Jeannie eventually showed up, Sofia seated us, and we kicked things off with a couple glasses of a sparkling rose pinot noir, Carpene Malvoti from the Veneto. It was a pretty deep red for a rose, had a spritely berry-like nose, hints of strawberry and watermelon on the palate, and an unexpectedly bright acidity and tartness which made it seem even more perfect for such a hot and muggy day. Anyway onto the food…

The amuse was a bite-sized slice of mortadella accented with a pickled vegetable of some sort. Simple but delicious. I would have loved a few more bites of that mortadella, um, or more like a log of it to go. The first official course of our tasting menu was thin slices of citrus cured arctic char draped over a mound of lemon confit garnished with a few microgreens. Char, that fish that people often mistake for salmon, is usually considerably leaner than salmon, but these slices had such a richness to them and they really benefited from the gentle acidity of the lemon confit and the mild bitterness of the microgreens. A very nice dish to open with.

Things got even better with the next course- smoked trout over onion puree and a pickled onion relish. Normally you would think of smoked fish as kind of a blah dish, usually not just smoky but fishy and with dry crumbly flesh. Not here. The trout fillet was still completely intact, and had a succulently moist, gently-cooked, almost luxurious texture which is not something I would have ever thought trout could possess no matter how you cooked it. It had a mild smokiness and balanced nicely with the two variations of onions which accompanied it, one savory the other sweet.

The third course was for me the big winner of the night- lightly cooked sturgeon slices over a potato and leek sauce which was essentially a thicker version of parmentier soup (think vichysoisse but warm and not as much cream) accented with beautiful American caviar. Truth be told, the sturgeon itself did not taste of much, but the texture and neutrality of the fish made it the ideal vehicle for that magnificent sauce. An absolutely killer dish.

The next course was perhaps the weakest of the night- shreds of duck confit meat, a few gnocchi and a barely cooked quail egg floating in an intense broth of Japanese mushrooms. This was certainly the most complex presentation of the night but it didn’t entirely work for me. The gnocchi were incredibly light so the dish gets props for pulling that off, but they were also completely underseasoned, which I believe was intentional because the mushroom broth, while really intense with an awesome earthiness, was also way too salty. Taking a bite of the gnocchi with a spoonful of broth achieved a perfectly balanced mouthful of goodness, but there was so much broth in the bowl it seemed to suggest that it was meant to be consumed like a soup. And as salty as that broth was, there was no way we were going to do that. The quail egg was delicious, but just seemed somewhat out of place in that bowl.

Final course for me was a little hunk of veal accompanied by a sauce of whole mini morels. This was another case of the somewhat nondescript protein being just a carrier for the sauce, and also another case of one being underseasoned and the other overseasoned. The veal was perfectly cooked, still very moist, but any subtle flavors it might have had were drowned out by the saltiness of the morels. They weren’t as salty as the mushroom broth of the previous dish, but still a little too salty to taste on its own without the veal. Still a good dish though and I cleaned up every last speck of it, but Jeannie’s entree was better. She swapped out the veal entree with pork and was served a couple slices beautifully rimmed with fat, and a small piece of pork belly. The sliced pork was certainly good, but man oh man, that pork belly was insanely good. The fat had a clean but subtly nuanced flavor. Yes it still tasted like pork fat, but the extra dimensions of gentle flavor as it melted in my mouth were indescribably spectacular.

Then to round out the big meal we opted for a light dessert- a lemon verbena granita over a cherry soup with bits of pistachio. Simple clean flavors, and oh so good. The soup and the cherry halves were not overly sweet nor sour, and the granita added a refreshing herbal note to the whole dish. The nuts added a textural contrast, but they were just a bonus; it really would have been just as good of a dish even without them. I definitely favor fruity desserts at the end of big meals as opposed to heavier chocolate offerings, and along those lines I must say, this was one of the best restaurant desserts I’ve ever tasted.

So if you haven’t been to Gramercy Tavern in a while or you thought it had gone downhill, now’s a great time to give it another try. I went with the tasting menu, but the a la carte offerings looked fantastic too. I just may have to make a few return trips to work my way through that side of the menu.