NOTE: THIS PLACE IS NOW CLOSED!
I went to Le Turtle with a group of Instagram food lunatic friends to try some of their iconic dishes. This ended up being one of the best meals I’ve had in a while. Let me get right down to it.
We started with the following:
Dry aged beef carpaccio with Hokkaido uni and pickled ramp bottoms. Just the right amount of surf with your turf. Great pop from the pickled ramps.
Sliced avocado and radish with avocado mousse, mango curd and mixed grains. Beautiful, light, refreshing and satisfying.
Fresh cheese and beets with apricot kernel oil, toasted sunflower seeds and a maple emulsion. This was fucking fantastic. Get it.
Tagliatelle carbonara with guanciale, pecorino and egg yolk emulsion. Really nice take on the classic pasta dish.
Halibut and tomato with brussels sprouts, calabrian chili and arugula. Perfectly cooked, light and flakey.
Fried octopus with crisped rice, ramp chimichurri sauce and togarashi and arbol chili peppers. One of the very best octopus dishes I’ve ever had. It gets braised for hours before a light batter fry. And the ramp chimichurri is incredible.
Sasso Poulet. This is the best whole chicken dish I’ve eaten. The birds are brined for days and then hung, to allow the skin to cook more crispy. The bird comes out on a plate of burning hay for display purposes, filling the dining room with an amazing aroma.
Then it comes back disarticulated and ready to eat. I particularly liked munching on the feet.
This comes with crispy fingerlings, chicken liver mousse and pickled shishito peppers. At $69 this is a steal, and can easily feed two people.
90 day dry aged Pat LaFrieda cote de boeuf. This comes out to the table for viewing uncut like this, before resting:
And then after resting it comes back ready to serve for two (or more) looking like this:
This would be a 10/10 if there was a bit more char and crisp on the outside. It’s a bit more like a roast. But the flavor is perfect. Not too funky that it fucks up your taste buds. Perfectly cooked. And the fat and trim is diced up and fried, which is a brilliant way to reduce waste and make everyone smile with more tasty bits to eat. 9/10. You can pass on using the molasses sauce that comes with it though.
There was also and Japanese yam dish that came out at this time. I wasn’t a big fan, but it was absolutely stunning.
There was also a simple but tasty salad of greens citrus and blue cheese. Good way to cut the richness of the steak.
Dessert was equally as impressive as the savory courses, and they were all unique, which is rare these days.
Hazelnut financier with blood orange creme anglaise and cranberry dust.
Chocolate sorbet with milk crumbs, sea salt and olive oil.
Forbidden rice pudding with vanilla chai ice cream, rye sand and coconut snow.
I highly recommend this place. Go while ramps are still in season though, because this is one place that actually made me respect that produce. Until now I didn’t get the infatuation with ramps. I’ll be back again very soon. In fact, I’m going tomorrow with my wife.
LE TURTLE
177 Chrystie St
New York, NY 10002
