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Allen & Delancey exhibits many characteristics common to the neighborhood, with one twist. The rooms are windowless and dimly lit, yes, and there is an elegant little bar up front, where you can sit nursing your cinnamon pisco sour by candlelight. A thick curtain of red velvet separates the two little dining rooms, which are appointed with old oil paintings and shelves of books. But the menu at Allen & Delancey is not your normal Lower East Side menu. It contains references to truffled fingerlings, fenugreek syrup, and slips of raw hamachi decorated with what are described as “pink grapefruit beads.” These conspicuous uptown flourishes are the work of an uptown chef, Neil Ferguson, who toiled for many years as chief lieutenant to Gordon Ramsay before getting summarily sacked by the volatile Scotsman. Like his former boss, Ferguson is a fussy classicist at heart, and he labors mightily to introduce a sense of posh, even delicate Britishness to his new hipster milieu. More often than not, he succeeds, especially when serving fancified versions of old English favorites, like deposits of beef-bone marrow larded with caviar and puréed shallots, and a delicious terrine made with layers of pressed ham knuckle, guinea hen, and foie gras. My little sweetbread “raviolo” was a welcome relief from the endless procession of meatball sliders you see in restaurants downtown, and the seared sea scallops (doused with “celery-root cream”) were the equal of the seared sea scallops served in some of the city’s more-established fine-dining Zip Codes. On the negative side, the fishy, crispy-skinned mackerel appetizer didn’t seem to meld with all the fruit and bacon on the plate, and the sashimi-quality hamachi was soaked in perhaps a few too many beads of pink grapefruit. — Adam Platt

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Adam Platt's Full Review (11/19/07)

Featured In

• Where to Eat 2008 (1/7/08)
• Where to Eat 2008: Best New Restaurants of the Year (1/7/08)
• Restaurant Openings: Allen & Delancey, and Primehouse New York (10/8/07)
• The Best of Fall's New Restaurants (9/3/07)