Skip to main content5-10 pm Monday-Saturday, 5-9 pm Sunday. $$$ Expensive.
[ANIMAL FAT EXTRAVAGANZA] While the decor at Le Pigeon is "enlightenment farmhouse" (copper, wood, brick, light), the food is somewhat more medieval—decadent and heavy of entrail. On sweetly mismatched china, you may be served any of the following: heart, liver, pancreas, stomach or face (well, "cheek"). Chef Gabriel Rucker's rustic menu handles such charming inversions well. He's best at layering complementary flavors and textures in clever combinations, as in the foie gras au torchon, an appetizer of warm scallion pancakes, hot cherry vermouth jam and a sous-vide pâté de foie gras the consistency of cold butter. The always-on-the-menu beef cheek bourguignon is a great heap of blackened cheek atop a blood-dark broth, in which float vivid rounds of orange carrot and sweet onion, and two slabs of salt-stamped pan-fried potato. It looks immovable but falls apart with a breath. Little—nothing?—on the menu is understated. If you're still conscious enough to eat dessert, finish with the foie gras profiterole, a glassy-eyed wench of a dish drenched in thickly salted caramel. HANNA NEUSCHWANDER.
Ideal meal: Crunchy fried sweetbreads with beets, blue cheese (whipped like cream) and greens; bone-in pork chop with fresh chile pesto, green beans, hazelnuts and ricotta; honey apricot cornbread with maple ice cream and bacon.
Best deal: Though lacking in offal, the $11 hamburger is held together by a steak knife.
WWeek 2015