The Pint Sized Palate — A Kid’s Take on New York Food

Date-Night Vibes, Kid-Approved Fries

By Churchill Stone

Capitaine
684 Greenwich St.

I was a little bit nervous when I was walking in with my mom and my sister. We had a Tuesday 7 p.m. reservation and the restaurant was quite full. Plus, the whole place gave complete date night vibes. Couples on dates. Girls with friends. I saw no kids in the whole place. But when they led us to our seat, thankfully I spotted a family next to us with two children.

It was dark inside, with an amber bronzy light. That’s because there were candles on the tables, on the walls, and in chandeliers above us. At the front was a huge bar. We sat in a booth with soft comfy couch-like seats next to the window where we could see other people dining right outside. Paintings and photographs on the walls semi-circled us.

The menu was very fancy and quite expensive. Most items were also quite adult but they did have a few things that caught my eye. I started off with the Yuzu lemonade, my sister with the plain lemonade. Yuzu is a type of Asian lemon which tastes tart and sweet at the same time. I know that doesn’t’t exactly make sense, but you’d get it if you tried it yourself. It was very good and different from other lemonades, but still with that flavor and color of the classic lemonade we all know and love.

The sourdough bread and butter was fantastic. The bread was amazing (I have spent time in San Francisco so I know sourdough bread) and the butter so creamy, soft, and rich! It was from Normandy, which is in France. You can never put on too much good Norman butter!

The food took a while to get to us. We started with American Wagyu Bavette steak. Wagyu is a special cow from Japan that we also have here in the U.S. Bavette is from further back on the cow, closer to the butt, so it is not fancy; it’s more like sirloin. The steak was cooked perfectly and tasted soooo good. It did have some green sauce on the bottom which tasted just like raspberries and it was phenomenal! Only, for $52, the portion of steak was quite small.

But the steak came with fries and those were definitely worth $52! They were duck fat fries so they fry them twice! They come with Calabrian aioli which was good, but I just had them with ketchup and mayonnaise combined which I like. My sister said, “These French fries are so good, I can eat them without ketchup!” They were the best French fries I’ve ever had. Period!

We also ordered a cheeseburger. I did not realize that it had pickles and “lyonnaise” onions (which just means they cook them in butter). I did not like the pickles, but actually really liked the onions — it was my first time with onions on a burger so that was new. The cheese was American which I love and always melts well. The burger was so tender that it kept falling out of the bun which made the process of eating it quite tricky. The burger was great and cooked perfectly, but it was sooo rich I only ate half of it. My mom ate the rest because she didn’t get much steak since it was so small.

My mom also got the oysters and she said they were very good. My cousin got the crab cakes which I tried and liked because they were a little salty, cake-y, crunchy, but soft inside. I was surprised I liked them.

The dessert was not very good. The ice cream cake had too much cake and not enough ice cream. The ice cream tasted bland and the pound cake was dense and bitter.

The raspberry sorbet was very rich and tasted just like raspberries. So that was the perfect end of the meal for me. Plus, it’s probably healthier than other desserts.

Overall a great restaurant and a surprising number of kid friendly dishes. If you order the Yuzu lemonade and the fries, it would only cost $18!

Thank you so much for the fancy experience, Capitaine!

3.6 stars