KINGSLEY
Brunching with friends is a important part of my life. I love brunching. It's the perfect moment to grab some friends and spill all the latest tea over carb filled meals. My best friend was in town for the weekend so naturally we headed to brunch. Our original brunch plans were flipped around because of a 1.5 hour wait list, so we looked else where. I grabbed a table at Kingsley on my OpenTable app and we headed down the block.
Kingsley has been on my dining radar for a couple of months now as their delicious Instagram photos grace my timeline. Kingsley is also a new contemporary French-American restaurant located on Avenue B with focus on local, seasonal, market driven and nose to tail food. And if you know me then you know thats everything I love in on sentence.
To start, when we saw the words "pork fat frosting" on the brunch menu, we knew we were in the right place. Kingsley is super cute and modern and the outdoor patio will be perfect for additional brunches and sexy dinners in the near future. As we got settled in by the window and started catching up on life and business, we alerted our server that we wanted to order everything. Well not everything but here's what we ordered:
Ricotta Fritters, Seasonal Fruit Compote
House Made Bacon w/ Mayo
Citrus Coffee Cake
Steak and Eggs
Praline Bacon French Toast Bread Pudding
We had our meal start off with the sweets, then trickle into the mains. Coffee cake, ricotta fritters and bacon arrived and we dug in. The star of this group was the ricotta fritters with rhubarb compote. The fritters where perfectly fluffy and warm and the rhubarb compote was slightly sweet and slightly tangy. The house cured bacon was a great addition to break up all the sweets on the table although the bacon was room temp and the addition of the mayo made for a lot of creamy fat on your palate.
We were really excited for the french toast bread pudding with pork fat frosting and as soon as it was brought to our table we went right for it. It's a warm bread pudding-french toast mash up with pecans, pieces of thick cut bacon and a slightly sweet syrup. The pork fat frosting melts into the crevices of the bread pudding and adds an additional layer of smoke to the dish. I highly recommend ordering this dish for the table. I also recommend ordering the steak and eggs. With a perfect sunny side up egg on top, our medium wagyu rib steak was fantastic! The steak was perfectly cooked, buttery and melted in your mouth just as wagyu should. You could tell a wonderful angelic line cook was basting this piece of meat with butter as it was cooking. The smashed potatoes were crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside and I never need another hash brown again if I could have these potatoes all the time.
As we successfully finished all the food on the table, my best friend and I agreed that Kingsley is not a place to dine at if you are on a diet, but a place to come if you want really good, and refined "comfort food". We left feeling great and thats what a great restaurant should do to you during and after the meal. I cant wait to dine at Kingsley for dinner, as I already have my eye set on the 9 course chef's tasting menu.
KINGSLEY
190 Avenue B, N.Y. N.Y 10009 | 212.674.4500 | Website
