Angelica Kitchen

So I have a co-worker who came back from the weekend about a few months ago and declared, “I’m on the Mediterranean Diet now.”

For a few weeks I made fun of him every time he pulled out his Nook to tell me a new thing he learned (the day he got to the chapter where it asks “Can you drink coffee on the Mediterranean Diet?” (answer: yes, the people of the Mediterranean do enjoy their coffee, you can just skip the milk) was a good day). He was a bit cranky and complained about wishing he was eating pizza right now instead of not eating pizza.

Then, in that magical third week, he waltzed in with his milkless coffee and said actually, he’s been feeling a lot better.

Of COURSE he was – when you cut out processed flour, red meats, other fatty animal products, and change the focus of your meals to veggies and good fats, you’re going to feel better. All diet advice really boils down to that, right?

Here was the kicker that got me to go on amazon.com a buy a copy of The Mediterranean Diet at the very moment the kicker happened.

He said, “My grocery bill is cut in half.” Turns out cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, chickpeas, and couscous are pretty cheap, especially when 4 out of 5 meals consist of these very ingredients.

Sold.

Okay, maybe you’re thinking, Didn’t she just write a blog entry about eating a lobster roll where even the bread was slathered in butter? And now you’re definitely thinking that.

That day may have been my anti-Mediterranean apex – breakfast burrito that morning, cheeseburger for lunch, lobster roll for dinner. But I swear I’ve been good, mostly. Partly, it’s because the diet is both intuitive and has some sensible rules around it as well. Check out the food pyramid. It breaks down food you can eat daily, weekly, and monthly and doesn’t put eggs, beans, and red meat in the same category just because they’re all sources of protein.

It was a rainy Monday when I made dinner plans with my bff and was feeling maybe not as committed to the Mediterranean lifestyle as I’m intending to be. Really, I wanted a burrito from Calexico Cart and fuck if a restructured food pyramid was going to stop me.

But then, the rain persisted and I slowly started to take it as a sign that greasy, delicious, juicy, cheesy, non-Mediterranean cart food was probably in my immediate future.

We had also had plans to walk across the Brooklyn bridge to obtain said burritos, so new plan was proposed to walk across the Williamsburg bridge, which was actually on the way home, and perhaps eat somewhere a little more in line with beautifully illustrated pyramid above. Angelica Kitchen was decided on based on price, proximity to the bridge and bff endorsement of “ooh, let’s go there, it’s really good.”

I walk down to the East Village from midtown (getting in that daily physical activity part of the pyramid, woot) and arrive around 7 pm to a bustling veg restaurant with friendly wood decor and smiling wait staff. They gesture for me to take a seat after they take my name and ask me to tell them when my friend has arrived.

Mouthing sorry through the window, the bff is here and we are seated. We haven’t seen each other in weeks (and we are also roommates so this is really a feat) so the waiter comes by several times before we’ve even opened the menu as we catch each other up on pretty much everything.

I decide on the daily special, after I find out what a croquette is and like the description. The croquettes are filled with brown rice and veggies and surrounded by veggies and covered in two different kinds of sauces made from veggies and legumes. My Mediterranean food pyramid is going to fill up nicely.

The bff gets a giant bowl of chili with a side of cornbread and lime-jalapeno tofu sour cream WTF and we return to our steady stream of non-stop talking. I can’t help but eye every dish that comes out of the kitchen though. Each plate looks and smells not only delicious, but beautiful. Then our plates (and bowls) arrive and I get to see one of these creations up close:

Yes, it is just as delicious as it looks. The croquettes are ridiculous – a mixture of vegetables, spices, and crispy outer shell that with the pureed carrot mousse thing WTF on top is a perfect, delightful bite. The steamed green beans and what taste like baked cauliflower are great side dishes and the surprise salad (which I could very well have just missed on the description because there were too many other things listed) was a nice way to round out the plate.

I, of course, had a bite–or several–of bff’s chili and it was just the right amount of spicy. Their cornbread though, stole the show. And I am hugely critical of cornbread even since having my boyfriend’s 70-year-old-raised-in-North-Carolina aunt’s Thanksgiving cornbread. Yeah.

They claim that it’s “southern style” on the menu but, well, the restaurant is vegan, so you do the no-butter math. It also looked like they used wheat flower instead of white flour. It did look as fluffy as cornbread should look and I was definitely going to take a taste. How? Did they do this? You didn’t miss the butter at all. This cornbread wasn’t just good-for-being-vegan, it was good. Real good.

Surprisingly, I could only get through one of the croquettes and the bowl of chili was only halfway finished when we were ready to ask for doggy bags. Who knew non-meat-based food could fill you up so fast?

Or maybe we were just leaving room for dessert. We settled on a raspberry lemon tart with a pecan crust (vegan!). Yep. Real good.

It was nice to walk out of the restaurant feeling pleasantly full and still ready for a walk. We walked to the bridge, over the bridge, and under the bridge, stream of talking non-stop since we sat down at the restaurant. We even took an extra walk around the block when we got home because we were still talking.

There’s nothing like a good best friend dinner date at a Mediterranean-diet-friendly restaurant. Now I’m off to have fried potato pancakes for brunch.

(So the mediterranean diet thing is still a work in progress.)

Veggie Croquette – super Mediterranean-diet-friendly shimmy
Chili and Cornbread – good AND vegan shimmy
Lemon and Raspberry Tart – disappeared off the plate too fast shimmy

Angelica Kitchen
300 EAST 12TH STREET,
New York, NY
(212) 228-2909