Charlie Bird

Earlier this year, I took a break from blogging because I was going to the same restaurants and didn’t want to blog about them. We were trying some new restaurants but I was disappointed by the places we were visiting. And then I went to Charlie Bird NYC and now I can’t stop thinking about the restaurant and how amazing the food and atmosphere were! I went with Erika, who was visiting from San Francisco, on a Monday night and were seated at a long (semi-communal because the seats were so close) table.

I started with the old pal, made with Rye, vermouth and Campari:

Charlie Bird is the second casual restaurant I’ve visited recently that gives tap water and sparkling water for the table (the other restaurant, if you’re curious, was The Smith):

They also give you rosemary focaccia with olive oil:

To start our meal, we shared the farro salad:

The farro salad is ridiculously delicious; for the colder weather, they’ve changed it to roasted pumpkin, mint, pistachios and radishes (in the summer, they usually add arugula and grape tomatoes – the recipe is here). The farro is cooked in apple cider so it has a lot of flavor on its own, but with the different textures and flavors of the pistachios, radishes, Parmesan and basil, it’s an actual party in your mouth. We split the farro salad but both said we could’ve ordered another just for ourselves.

We also ordered the Tuscan chicken liver with balsamic raisins, capers and walnuts:

I love chicken liver and usually have to order it when it’s on a restaurant’s menu and the chicken liver here was minerally, rich and absolutely phenomenal. We were a little worried that we didn’t order enough but the chicken liver was so rich I was worried that we had ordered too much!

After the chicken liver and farro salad, we moved onto the pasta – the linguine nero with blue crab, chiles and lemon:

They make their own pastas at Charlie Bird and it was delicious, but not my favorite dish (I mean, everything was so good this was just a close second). Erika said that after the farro salad, this was her favorite!

We also ordered the caramalized cauliflower with almonds and lemon:

I love cauliflower and the flavors from this dish were bright and citrus-y. I loved the additional textures from the almonds and pancetta.

For dessert, we ordered the olive oil cake with Marscapone and salty oat crumble:

We loved the food, the atmosphere (the bathrooms have little jars of Life Savers – mint and fruit flavored!) and the music, which is a tad loud but all good hip hop, and the service. We will definitely be back!