Restaurant Review: Filthy Witch Summons Blanca’s Ghost

Every time I eat at a restaurant with a tasting menu, which is several times a month and would be several times a week if I went through every single one that comes up, I wonder what I would think of the same meal if it were served by a regular restaurant. he. If he ordered a la carte, would everything taste just as good? Would my check be lower? Would he still walk out feeling like he swallowed a couch cushion?

The closest I’ve come to answering these questions has been eating at disgusting witcha five-month-old Italian restaurant in the East Village owned by two of the founders of Roberta’s and white. Roberta’s is, of course, the Bushwick restaurant known for its artfully charred pizza, Tiki Disco parties, and the radio station that broadcasts food programming from its backyard. Blanca is a 12-seat bunker in the very backyard that has been closed since the early days of the pandemic. Inside, the resort’s spiraling rock festival atmosphere gave way to the disciplined creativity of tasting menus that spanned nearly 30 courses and cost $200 or more.

Under the direction of Carlo Mirarchi, the chef and one of the owners, Blanca’s kitchen put together two- or three-bite dishes that often surprised, both for the quality of their main ingredients and for the unexpected twists the kitchen put on them. Agnolotti would burst with molten taleggio turned greenish-black by the powdered phytoplankton he knew to be the ocean floor. Dry-aged duck breast would be slow-roasted over Japanese charcoal and served with beetroot mole, as earthy and smoky as an underground fire.

There are plans to reopen Blanca at some point; meanwhile, a bit of her spirit lives on in Foul Witch. Her first incarnation was Foul Witch by Blanca, a sit-down restaurant that Mr. Mirarchi and Brandon Hoy, her business partner, managed over the four-day duration of the the frieze art fair in New York in 2018. Foul Witch then went to sleep. When dawn broke, in January, she was on Avenue A.

The name comes from a line in the 1985 cult fantasy film “Legend” (and before that, a play called “The Tempest”). According to the restaurant’s website.“Foul Witch offers spooky Italian food and an uninhibited natural wine list in an intimate gothic setting.”

The cramped restaurant doesn’t look particularly gothic, apart from the changing colors cast by a medusa lamp at the end of the bar and some silhouettes on the kitchen wall that may or may not represent goat heads. Often, though, the kitchen, under the direction of Sam Pollheimer, the head chef, summons the ghost of the older restaurant, in a simpler, more streamlined way.

The agnolotti that bleed black blood return in a much less creepy form, this time with more taleggio than plankton; mixed with tender English peas, asparagus juice and chive flowers, they conjure up no terrifying visions at all, unless you’re afraid of cottage gardens in the Cotswolds.

The pasta at Foul Witch is always served in primi portions and is usually a bit idiosyncratic, sometimes in ways you might want to argue with. I wished the pasta sheets used to make beef tortellini had been rolled a little thinner; the creamy filling of whipped gizzards would have been even more eye-catching than it was.

But the spaccatelli (another name for strozzapreti) with a stir-fry of “aged game” (squab and duck) helped me remember how much flavor Blanca used to get from her dried meats. The dish also taught me a new ingredient: red walnuts. Chopped into the ragù, they were sweeter and smoother than typical walnuts, and together with the Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings, they offset the intensity that aging had given the meat.

There is also a far-reaching flavor in duck prosciutto. It’s made in-house, like the testa, which is served on a hot plate to melt into a deliciously dripping mass of soft pink meat and softer white fat. You might want to spread it—or pour it, really, because it’s almost runny—on top of some Foul Witch focaccia or Roberta’s bread. These two are a study in contrasts; the crispy, chewy bread requires some engagement of your jaw, while the tender focaccia almost dissolves on your tongue. Both are very good, among the benefits of eating on a branch of Roberta’s family tree.

From most points in the dining room you can see the flames of the wood oven. This is used to cook most main dishes, and they get a distinctive rustic flavor from their smoke and high heat. A whole roasted John Dory has been on the menu lately; Compared to any whole fish you can find in downtown Italian restaurants, John Dory’s is so much sweeter and better that you can’t believe it isn’t served more often. Foul Witch hangs it by its tail next to the oven to keep the chill out of the fridge before putting it in the oven. Then the cockles are added to the pan, almost too small to eat but full of juices that flow into a wonderful broth of green garlic and olive oil.

Whole fish is something you don’t often see on a tasting menu; it’s too big, too bony, too messy. My group of four ripped it off happily.

The kitchen has a charcoal grill when you need to focus the heat more precisely. It is used, for example, to brown a grilled pork neck, almost as red as sirloin and seasoned with fennel pollen.

For dessert, Foul Witch has a plate of cut citrus. I have had it with tangerines and Kishu tangerines, each with the peels. They are dressed with olive oil and carrot juice, then sprinkled with salt, toasted breadcrumbs, and serrano chiles. This could easily be a salad. Either way, it’s as challenging as it is rewarding. You won’t confuse it with a dish served anywhere else.

Foul Witch is not a cheap restaurant, but the a la carte menu makes it more flexible than Blanca. The food left me with two conflicting desires. Wish I could go to Blanca again. But I also wished more of the tasting menu restaurants in New York would open a place like Foul Witch. Too many good ideas are locked in small rooms where very few people get to experience them.

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