Animal Restaurant

Last Sunday night, I went out to Animal Restaurant to celeberate my best friend's birthday. I read some reviews about the chefs and the restaurant before we went.

Key points from the reviews....

• great food
• really friendly staff
• the restaurant feels very New York
• must try the chocolate bacon dessert

I must say that all of them are right on. We were running late and they say they have a strict 15 minute leeway policy for your reservation but they were able to accomodate for us still. The restaurant is a little hard to spot, since it had no sign whatsoever posted on the outside. (I know, so hipster, right?) The only sign was at the valet booth, but we knew that ahead of time so it wasn't too big of a problem for us. The restaurant definitely felt NYCish. It was quite small with plain walls, dim lighting, and dark furniture. The ambiance was nice and I really liked it. (menu picture)
Now on to the food....it was WONDERFUL!!! Our table shared a bunch of appetizers. Fried hominy, sweetbread with creamed spinach, blood orange salad, and blanched kelp salad. The entrees we had were the rib eye with escargo (It's made for 2 and it was ginormous as you can see from the picture), the flat iron steak with potatoes, and a salad but I forgot what it was. My favorite dish was the sweetbread. My friend and I ordered it thinking that it would actually be bread but it wasn't. We learned that it is actually the thymus or pancreas gland from usually a cow. However, at Animal, the sweatbread was from a hen. It was delicious!

Finally, I get to talk about their desserts. Right now, I guess there is a trend of pairing bacon and chocolate or just puttin bacon in desserts in general. Animal is known for their chocolate bacon dessert, so of course we had to order it to try. I am not a huge fan of sweet and salty but it was pretty good. It was a dark chocolate fudge bar with walnuts and of course crispy bacon. The texture was like that of a Crunch Bar but less airy. We also ordered the tres leches cake. Again, I am not a huge fan of tres leches cakes, but this one was amazing!!! It had the perfect amount of moisture and sweetness to it. I'd definitely order it again!  (Tres Leches Cake and Chocolate Bacon Bar Picture)

I really enjoyed my time at Animal Restaurant. The menu changes daily according to what if fresh and available from local farmer's markets. I love the fact that they use local ingredients!