Lenox serves an bold tackle Nuyorican delicacies.
Lenox appears like a visit to the seaside, minus the saltwater breeze—like Miami, however linen-shirt Miami, not sequined-minidress Miami. The palm-print wallpaper, rattan lighting fixtures, and rum-soaked cocktail listing transport diners straight to La Placita, the party-hearty Puerto Rico neighborhood which supplies its identify to a fiery tropical fruit drink on the bar menu.
Yellow flower petals, pink pickled onions, and recent white farmers cheese dance on high of the dishes. An island of plantains, mashed and seasoned into mofongo swims in an ocean of wealthy purple shrimp criolla broth, a deliberate reminder of the affect of West African culinary traditions on Puerto Rico’s delicacies, and of chef-owner Jhonny Reyes’ intentional, inclusive outlook on Afro-Latino delicacies. A fragile cherry tomato, pickled in Champagne vinegar and fished from the chimichurri washing over my bistec encebollado, pops with a brilliant acidity.
Chef Jhonny Reyes may be very clear that he’s not right here to recreate anyone’s abuela’s cooking.
Serving a bravely bold tackle a delicacies town principally lacks, the Belltown restaurant appears slightly un-Seattle in some ways. However don’t let the melodious chirping of coquí frogs taking part in within the bogs idiot you into considering you’ve stepped into Viejo San Juan. Reyes may be very clear that he’s not right here to recreate anyone’s abuela’s cooking. He describes his cooking as Nuyorican—stemming from the diaspora that introduced Caribbean delicacies to Spanish Harlem, the place Lenox, the avenue, brims with adobo and sazón.
At Lenox, the restaurant, Reyes makes his variations of these twin constructing blocks of Puerto Rican delicacies from scratch. “Adobo is our all the things spice,” he says of the standard garlic, oregano, turmeric, and black pepper seasoning. “It’s what makes Puerto Rican meals Puerto Rican.” It really works in tandem with the sazón, during which Reyes makes use of annatto and paprika instead of dyes and amps up the earthy tones with cloves and allspice. That base permits Reyes to make use of his expertise at a CVS receipt–worthy listing of Seattle’s high eating places to experiment with out dropping the important flavors of his heritage.
Lenox appears like a visit to the seaside, minus the saltwater breeze.
Lenox leans onerous on the concept the place one thing comes from shapes it, however doesn’t set it in stone. Dishes decide up components as they journey with the diaspora from the Gulf of Guinea to an island within the Caribbean to a neighborhood on the East River, after which onto Seattle. With its modern takes on Nuyorican delicacies and laid-back vibes, Lenox brings Seattle’s restaurant scene an exhilarating breath of recent sea air.
That begins with impressively attentive service. Once I ask for assist selecting between two drinks on my first go to, the server affords to convey me a pattern of the Clarified Piña Colada, releasing me as much as order the earthy Coquí-nut Mojito. The cocktail program is designed by John Fry, who brings immense rum expertise from a half-decade at Rumba. By the point my buddy arrives, I giggle at how settled I’m on the bouncy, cushioned chair with two drinks in entrance of me. (Comfy seating is one other refreshingly trend-bucking trait of Lenox.) As she settles into the pale pink cushions of the banquette, the server brings her an identical pattern. Over the course of my meals there, I discover the telltale shot glass of clear liquid on the bar and touchdown at tables. I hear servers supply to make virgin drinks alcoholic and vice versa. As my buddy nears the underside of her drink, the server surreptitiously slides the cocktail menu over.
The rum-soaked cocktail listing transports diners straight to La Placita, the party-hearty Puerto Rico neighborhood.
As troublesome as choosing a drink was, the brief meals menu made selecting dishes a lot simpler. The trio of chilly plates are gentle and salad-like. The Tres Hermanas honors the highlights of a summer time harvest and Indigenous co-planting traditions with the heat of roasted corn, squash, and inexperienced beans countered by a creamy Inexperienced Goddess dressing and pickled cherries. The small plates, all of that are virtually sufficiently big to be a meal on their very own, hew heavier. The alcapurria stuffs Cuban-style picadillo into the traditional Puerto Rican cassava and plantain fritter; the plate-size empanada spills over with Puerto Rican rooster stew. “We attempt to combine and match and create one thing that any individual can acknowledge by means of style,” says Reyes. That frees them up so as to add a bit extra visible razzle-dazzle to go together with the nice aesthetics of the room, which was designed by Reyes’s spouse, trainer Sarah Fox.
The undisputed star of Lenox comes from the 4 large plates: the Lechon, with its shatteringly crisp pores and skin defending the tender meat rolled inside. The method to show pork stomach into one thing so multitextured and sumptuous feels like a sequence of torture experiments. First, Reyes jacquards the pores and skin, stabbing it with a metallic poker to create holes by means of which moisture (the enemy of crispness) can escape. It receives a layer of salt remedy and a holy trinity of Puerto Rican seasonings that offers the butterflied stomach its taste, every of which the restaurant makes in-house: adobo, sazón, and recaíto, a mixture of bell pepper, onion, garlic, and culantro. Because it roasts, the pores and skin bubbles and crackles, crowning the meat with its crunch.
Reyes considers his lechon the fruits of all the things he is seen and carried out in his culinary profession.
The inch-high slice of pork sits amid a pool of salsa verde, on a throne of arroz con gandules, the standard Puerto Rican dish of rice and pigeon peas. Southern-style braised mustard greens get a Caribbean infusion with sazón-laced coconut potlikker, and the area expands with the onions on high, styled after Haitian pikliz. “That’s type of like a fruits of all the things that I’ve seen and carried out in my culinary profession,” says Reyes.
His resume begins with the late Thierry Rautureau’s Luc and contains Artwork of the Desk, Restaurant Roux, and a protracted stint at JuneBaby, the much-acclaimed restaurant from chef Edouardo Jordan. Reyes departed the latter after the Seattle Occasions revealed a scathing report on Jordan’s sexual misconduct. “It was undoubtedly a really upsetting scenario,” says Reyes, however he nonetheless seems at what he took away from his time there. “[It] was a extremely good alternative to find out about what I’m doing now,” he says. “Which is cooking cultural meals with intent.”
Lenox’s method to Afro-Latino meals clearly shares DNA with Jordan’s approach of Southern delicacies: the thoughtfulness behind every ingredient, the consideration of each step in each culinary and cultural contexts. Disappointingly, regardless of Reyes vital expertise at JuneBaby, a restaurant that specialised in rice, Lenox doesn’t share that obsession: the most important misstep at Lenox got here within the type of repeatedly clumpy, poorly cooked rice.
Serving the meals of a diaspora is, by nature, a difficult enterprise, like piecing again collectively the shards of a dropped plate, its damaged bits flung in regards to the globe. Nostalgia rivals starvation as the perfect sauce, but it surely additionally tends to view meals by means of icy glasses that idealize a delicacies frozen in time. Reyes’s considerate cooking sidesteps the authenticity fable because it weaves collectively components and strategies from across the Afro-Latino world, utilizing explosive flavors and loads of coconut to easy over any cracks. It dares to step away from each the culinary traditions that inform it and the overall sameness of so many new Seattle eating places.
