Restaurant Review: Foul Witch in the East Village Summons the Ghost of Blanca

A new restaurant in the East Village brings some tasting-menu sophistication to an à la carte dining room.

Some but not all of the cooking at Foul Witch is recognizably Italian.Credit...Rachel Vanni for The New York Times

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By Pete Wells

Whenever I eat in a tasting-menu restaurant — which is several times a month and would be several times a week if I reviewed each one that came along — I find myself wondering what I’d think of the same food if a normal restaurant served it. If I ordered à la carte, would everything taste as good? Would my check be lower? Would I still walk out feeling as if I’d swallowed a couch cushion?

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

Under Carlo Mirarchi, the chef and one of the owners, Blanca's kitchen assembled two- or three-bite dishes that were often astonishing, both for the quality of their prime ingredients and for the unexpected twists and turns the kitchen gave them. Agnolotti would burst with molten taleggio turned green-black by powdered phytoplankton that tasted like the bottom of the ocean. Dry-aged duck breast would be grilled slowly over Japanese charcoal and served with beet mole, as earthy and smoky as an underground fire.

There are plans to reopen Blanca at some point; meanwhile, a little of its spirit lives on in Foul Witch. Its first incarnation was Foul Witch by Blanca, a sit-down restaurant that Mr. Mirarchi and Brandon Hoy, his business partner, ran for the four-day duration of the Frieze art fair in New York in 2018. Foul Witch then went to sleep. When it woke up, in January, it was on Avenue A.

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

The narrow restaurant does not look especially gothic, apart from the shifting colors cast by a jellyfish lamp at the end of the bar and some silhouettes on the kitchen wall that may or may not represent goat's heads. Often, though, the cooking, under Sam Pollheimer, the chef de cuisine, summons the ghost of the older restaurant, in simpler, streamlined fashion.

The agnolotti that bleed black blood return in much less spooky form, this time with more taleggio than plankton; tossed with tender English peas, asparagus juice and chive blossoms, they conjured no terrifying visions at all, unless you are afraid of cottage gardens in the Cotswolds.

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

But the spaccatelli (another name for strozzapreti) with a sauté of "aged game bird" (squab and duck) helped me remember how much flavor Blanca used to get out of its dry-aged meats. The dish taught me a new ingredient, too: red walnuts. Chopped into the ragù, they were sweeter and smoother than typical walnuts, and together with shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano, they offset the intensity that aging had given the meat.

There is far-reaching flavor in the duck prosciutto, too. It's made in the restaurant, like the testa, which is served on a warmed plate so it melts into a delightfully drippy mass of soft pink meat and softer white fat. You might want to spread it — or pour it, really, because it is nearly liquid — over some Foul Witch focaccia or Roberta's bread. These two are a study in contrasts; the crunchy, chewy bread requires some commitment from your jaw, while the tender focaccia almost dissolves on your tongue. They’re both very good, among the benefits of eating on a limb of the Roberta's family tree.

From most spots in the dining room you can see the flames in the wood-burning oven. This is used to cook most of the main courses, and they get a distinctive, rustic flavor from its smoke and high heat. A whole roasted John Dory has been on the menu lately; compared with whatever whole fish you are likely to find in Italian restaurants downtown, John Dory 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 chase off the refrigerator's chill before slipping it into the oven. Afterward, cockles are added to the pan, almost too small to eat but full of juices that run into a wonderful green-garlic and olive oil broth.

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 into it happily.

The kitchen has a charcoal grill when it needs to target the heat more precisely. It's used, for instance, to sear a grilled pork collar, almost as red as sirloin and peppered with fennel pollen.

For dessert, Foul Witch has a plate of cut-up citrus. I’ve had it with tangerines and Kishu mandarins, each with the peels left on. They are dressed with olive oil and carrot juice, then sprinkled with salt, toasted bread crumbs and serrano peppers. This could just as easily be a salad. Either way, it is as challenging as it is rewarding. You won't mistake it for a dish served anywhere else.

Foul Witch is not a cheap restaurant, but the à la carte menu makes it more flexible than Blanca. The meal left me with two competing desires. I wished I could go to Blanca again. But I also wished that more of the tasting-menu restaurants in New York would open a place like Foul Witch. Too many good ideas are being locked up in little rooms where too few people can experience them.

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This information was last updated on June 6, 2023

Pete Wells has served as restaurant critic since 2012. He joined The Times as dining editor in 2006. @pete_wells

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