kitchen and cocktails

girls night out, in the nabe...miss m suggested we check out the newly opened kitchen and cocktails. i had considered trying k and c only a week earlier, after trolling citysearch for some dining options on the LES. i thought, it's a somewhat prosaic name, and it got me thinking...what kind of food could one expect from such an obvious, others would say, positively unimaginatively named restaurant?

their actual website also made me think twice, since i had to strain to read the "welcome" note from the management. methinks someone over there needs to bring in their IT gal/guy, since the note is layered over a photo (and impossible to read), and there's a huge yellow blank space beneath it. hopefully they fix that some time soon. (ed note: i checked back on 8/4/ 05--the problem's fixed!)

but then, i did my due diligence, and found out that despite these quirks, this new restaurant has some good genes--it's the latest offering from the folks behind Luna Park (in SF and in LA). not that i've ever been (sadly) but i've heard of them, maybe even read a blurb about them at some point...and it made me feel more hopeful and excited, at the prospect of having a little taste of the left coast culinary scene.

hope and excitement were rewarded! yay!

the "kitchen" portion of the evening -- FAB! breaded pork cutlet stuffed with mushrooms and gruyere cheese, with mashed potatoes, string beans and apple-cranberry sauce. to be honest, when i think of breaded pork cutlet i think of "shake and bake" pork, which we had many many MANY times when i was a kid, and i think of any and every sort of "cutlet parm" or "cutlet provolone" in the universe. good stuff! but, entirely different from what was presented to me at kitchen and cocktails. crisp, panko-crusted pork, prepared perfectly, so that it was juicy...and oozing with gruyere. the string beans had a terrific zing (perhaps lemon salt?). chunky mashed potatoes added a bit of "home style" to the entree.

the other gals were pretty full from their entree selections (salad nicoise, and fontina stuffed ravioli, respectively) but i definitely wanted dessert. they agreed to have a bite, so while was very interested in the bourbon pecan chocolate cake with mint chip ice cream, or the bananas foster with banana ice cream, we compromised on the strawberry rhubarb crisp with vanilla ice cream. it was fine enough, but it had been baked in such a shallow dish that the crisp was quickly overwhelmed by the mound of fast-melting ice cream.

as for the cocktails: the white sangria was juicy and sweet, not very strong--nothing like the killer white peach sangria at barramundi --but it was tasty, and a nice accompaniment to my meal. (and my friends were so enamored of it that they ordered a couple for themselves.) the mojito was just average. which means disappointing.

the service at kitchen and cocktails mirrored my experience of the food and drink--spotty attention at the bar, but well-intentioned, thoughtful service at the tables. i would definitely go back--inspired by that yummy pork cutlet, i would love to see if they could duplicate the perfection of that dish, and if the other items on the menu are equally impressive.