Dinner for Two: Foxface Natural

[This restaurant review is part of a series of reviews. A broad description of the series format and other reviews in the series can be found here]

Menu

2 person prix fixe. 4 courses, each of us chose a different dish for each course and we shared all dishes. Add a bread course and an amuse bouche for 10 courses total. No additional drinks.

• Pig head amuse bouche

• Sourdough, butter, and pickles

• On Ice (Oysters & Razor Clam)

• Surf Clam Aguachile

• Quenelles

• Kangaroo Tartare

• Tuna Collar

• Boer Goat

• Sticky Toffee Pudding

• Young Coconut Sorbet

Final price: roughly $230

Mia's Review

A meal must be, above all else, delicious, especially one that you go out for. While Foxface Natural definitely had some tasty dishes–the kangaroo tartare was lean and savory in a comfortingly familiar way despite the novelty of the meat, the razor clams had a lemon olive oil emulsion that gave brightness to the meaty shellfish–I’m not sure “delicious” is how I’ll remember the overall experience.

Some of the starting courses were appetizing, but nothing to write home about. None of the dishes stood out as particularly interesting or unique until we got to the kangaroo. The Boer Goat was dried out, which was particularly disappointing given the tender, succulent bite I was expecting. The flavor was milder than what I would’ve wanted for the dish. The tuna was overwhelmed with a heavy miso sauce. It was paired with only a small slice of lemon and a tiny pile of pickled radish¹ to combat the fatty meal.

Overall, my biggest complaint is that each dish didn’t feel complete. There was no balance of multiple flavors that vied for my attention; no surprising combinations that tickled my fancy. The entrees especially felt too big – I wasn’t eager to take additional bites because each one felt so similar.

For more clarity on what I’m getting at, as a comparison point I recently ate a pork rib dish at Cafe Mado where I savored each bite. To walk you through the meal: for the first bite, I stabbed my fork into one of the perfectly cut and seared pork ribs, dabbed it into the autumn olive sauce and was pleased to discover the fatty, salty pork flavor combined with a tart, sweet autumn olive sauce. The first bite in and of itself felt complete: a mix of the basics (salt, sweet, acid²) overlaid with deeper flavors: butteriness and caramelization from the pork fat, a slightly pungent, mealy taste from the autumn olive, reminiscent of a rawer persimmon. Over the remainder of the course, I could experiment³ with different levels of the two sauces → a little extra pork fat on this next piece⁴, a little more autumn olive on the next. By the end, I was smiling, satisfied, and eager to come back for more.

This moment was missing from my meal at Foxface. I was never wholly delighted by the bite or the dish I was eating. The overall sequence of courses also felt lackluster: none had a special spice, deeper flavor, or delicate balance that I could point to and say “aha, that’s it! That thing I’m always chasing when I decide to eat out. That thing that excites me to try more new places and also become a better chef”.

For this reason, I personally am not likely to return. Maybe it was just this night? Maybe it’s a cuisine I understand less? But either way, with the long list of great restaurants in New York to try and be inspired by, I likely won’t be coming back to Foxface Natural any time soon.

1 out of 5.

Amol's Review

I'm a big fan of food that goes off the beaten path. I like offal, generally — tripe, sausage, liver, heart⁵, these are meats that are often overlooked but can be incredibly tasty when well done and make up the beating heart (pun intended) of a lot of traditional home cooked meals. So maybe it's not a surprise that I got three different recommendations to Foxface Natural, a high end Australian-inspired (?) spot in the Lower East Side. Like many other restaurants in and around the Tompkins Square Park area, Foxface has to have a thing that makes it unique. It's not enough to simply serve high end food. The neighborhood is filled with a certain kind of bohemian crowd — stereotypically tattooed and perennially wearing a beanie — that doesn't look kindly on tablecloths and chandeliers but does appreciate a good gimmick. For Foxface, that gimmick is "exotic" meat⁶, like the pig head, the kangaroo, the Boer goat. Thus the recommendations.

The problem for me is that I actually hate gimmicks. I like good food, and yes it's true that I like offal, but only because I think it's good. Weird food for its own sake isn't serving anyone; it needs to make sense in a dish, and it especially needs to make sense in the context of a larger fixed menu meal. And at the end of the day, the meal we got at Foxface just didn't make much sense.

I think my overall criticism of Foxface is that the meal was really imbalanced. Every bite after the clam was roughly the same "vibe" of salty/savory. It was a lot. Friends of mine know that I'm obsessed with sticky toffee pudding, but by the time that dessert course came out I was so exhausted by the heaviness of it all that I stole more of the still-fairly-savory sorbet than I probably should've (sorry Mia⁷). I don't have a problem with heavy meals, I will happily down a whole plate of BBQ from Hometown. But in that particular setting there's variation that lets you cut through the fat — you can choose, for example, if you need a bit more tangy BBQ or vinegary hot sauce, or if it's time to down a few pickles or to switch to a different meat for a bit. In any environment where there isn't sauce on the table, where the food doesn't come out all at once by default, you end up having to put a lot more faith in the kitchen and the chef to create balance. Ostensibly, that's what you're paying for! So the overall imbalance feels very striking when it comes at the cost of $100 per person.

Sometimes you can make up for a discordant meal by having individual dishes that are really absolutely excellent. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The goat, marinated for 24 hours, was still dry. The quenelles were way too salty. The tuna collar was overwhelmingly fatty, with a sticky miso sauce and overcooked slimy bok-choy⁸ that added to the cloying feeling.

One problem with opening a restaurant in NYC is that it's far too easy for your customers to compare dishes across restaurants. This is maybe unfair — I think you could make a compelling case for evaluating each dish on its own, objective merits. Still, part of why people read reviews is to understand whether a restaurant is worth their limited time and attention. With that in mind, I couldn't help but evaluate several of the dishes against better versions I've had elsewhere. The Surf Clam Aguachile was good, and if it was the first time I've ever had an aguachile I may have walked away significantly more impressed. But I've had a better version of the dish at Llamasan, a restaurant that simply nails everything in the ceviche category. Or take the goat again. The Boer goat was definitely dry, but I'm sympathetic — braised goat is tough to do. Except I've had better goat at Dhamaka⁹, where both the gosht and the gurda kapoora have brought Mia and I back to that restaurant over and over (the latter in particular is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to do goat).

What's especially aggravating about the quality difference between Foxface and these other restaurants is that both Llamasan and Dhamaka are something like $30 cheaper per person. That's a big difference! And it weighs on the experience of the meal overall — after all, the last course is always the check, and you don't want it to leave a bitter taste in the mouth. More generally, it's tough to look at a $100 meal when you think about opportunity costs the way I do. Was this meal really worth 5 Italian sandwich lunches from Il Buco?

There are things I disliked about both Llamasan and Dhamaka (not Il Buco, Il Buco is perfect¹⁰), so maybe it's wrong to compare the best of those restaurants with equivalents here. The best of Foxface was the On Ice raw shellfish plate and the Kangaroo Tartare. The razor clams were marinated in a flavorful acidic emulsion¹¹ that perfectly complemented the natural flavor of the shellfish. And while I don't particularly care for foam, the oysters themselves were super clean. As for the tartare, I was impressed by the depth and complexity of flavor in the meat. I think this was my favorite dish of the night, and if I was to go back I'd do so for the kangaroo alone.

But I likely won't be back.

Maybe the point of a prix fixe menu is NOT to get a meal where everything is outstanding. Maybe the point is to get a meal where there's a lot of variety and all the variety is relatively high quality and you get to walk away having tried something new, but it's not best in class at any one thing. But if that's the case, I'm generally biased against such menus. I'm happy to sacrifice variety at the altar of quality — I can always go somewhere else for the next meal after all, NYC is a town that truly has the best of the best on offer. And Foxface just isn't the best. For the price, it's not even particularly good.

2 out of 5.

What does each rating mean?

If we are rating a restaurant, that already means the place has merit. Something about it piqued our interest, or we got a recommendation from someone we generally trust. That said, we are exceptionally opinionated eaters, so we recommend modulating all of our ratings against your own tastes and preferences.

1 — this was a disappointing meal with very few redeeming qualities. We would not come back and would strongly recommend against it. We expect very few restaurants to fall into this category.

2 — a good meal, but not worth the price; there's better in the city for cheaper. We likely won't come back here.

3 — good price for the value. We expect most of the restaurants we review to fall in this category, including most of our 'go-to' casual spots.

4 — an excellent restaurant. Either a fantastic meal at a high price, or extremely good dollar value. We likely will be back here, and will go out of our way to be back multiple times, often with friends.

5 — one of the best restaurants we've been to, or meals that we've had. This is a restaurant that is best-in-class in its category or at its price point.

Restaurants change. The half life of a review like this one is about 6 months. That is, every 6 months, you should trust this review 50% less.

Pictures

Clockwise from the top left: On Ice, Boer Goat, Kangaroo Tartare, Tuna Collar

1. Amol: though I know you disagree, I thought it was a very tasty radish

2. Amol: ooo, did you get a new cookbook recently?

3. Amol: One of the things I've been thinking about more is how much the customer plays a role in crafting their meal. Is the ideal meal always an omakase? My hunch is no. I think this is a theme I am going to come back to a lot in our reviews...

4. Amol: there was also a lot of natural variance in the ribs themselves which i think helps

5. Mia: tripe and sausage yes; liver I can only stomach in pate and heart I can't do

6. Mia: I personally don't like gimmicks -- I believe the food and dish/meal quality should stand on its own

7. Mia: All good, it's probably my fault that you took so much of the entrees 😅

8. Mia: I was very confused by the completely plain, over-boiled bok choy on the plate...

9. Mia: Hmm I feel like I mentioned the comparison to Llamasan and Dhamaka to you when we discussed the meal on the ride back...🤔

10. Mia: I'm glad you liked it so much :) You mentioning Il Buco reminds me of Acme (Mads Refslund's Acme) -- that is the experience I would've wanted out of Foxface --> creative dishes that use novel ingredients in a way so delicious that you wonder why all chefs don't use them more commonly. Still sad that it closed down.

11. Mia: Hmm okay no more chatting before we write our reviews! Must keep our POVs unbiased. This definitely came from my comment.