Little Giant

Even though David and I live together, I feel like we don’t see each other that often anymore because of our busy work schedules. Sure, we see each other in the mornings for breakfast and before we go to sleep at night, but we don’t have our daily lunches, bike rides to/from work, or dinners together anymore since we work at very different companies now. Luckily, we planned a dinner together at Little Giant so we could all catch up.

Laura suggested the restaurant and I think they’ve been before but it was my first time at the LES restaurant and I was pretty excited to try it. We started off with some bread and herb-infused butter:

The butter was at a perfect spreading temperature and we went through it really quickly (the waitress had to bring more bread and butter at least three times). The bread was only okay – not dense enough to have a bite and the crust was way too hard for bread that was so airy).

We started off with the charred octopus:

A good start, but I thought it was a little too charred for my tastes. I prefer the octopus at Dell’Anima a lot more (similar presentation but instead of being served with vegetables, Dell’Anima’s is served on farro beans, I think).

For our main courses, we ordered macaroni and cheese with bacon:

Swine of the week:

Cod:

Buttermilk biscuits:

And an order of spinach on the side:

None of the main courses were really that enjoyable; the macaroni and cheese was too watered down and didn’t have enough bacon (or cheese), the swine of the week was a watered down tomato-based stew that didn’t have any depth, and the cod was the best out of the three, but was a little on the bland side. The spinach was very buttery and good, but it’s pretty difficult to mess up spinach. The buttermilk biscuit was also good, but I’ve definitely had better at Clinton St.

For dessert, we ordered the Thin Mint Sundae warm chocolate fudge cake, mint chip gelato, mint-chocolate sauce, peppermint tuile:

The sundae was really good (how can you mess up dessert?) – it was more like a warm brownie with gelato and chocolate sauce.

I was a little disappointed with our meal at Little Giant and the server was also a little airheaded (when my brother asked her to talk about one of the beers on the menu, she just stared at him with a clueless face until he ordered something else). I’ve heard good things about their brunch and not their dinner, so maybe we went for the wrong meal. Definitely wouldn’t return for dinner but I might give their brunch a chance.