If you want to get romantic at Trudie’s, as the pink and linen colors suggest, there’s a romantic restaurant for you: a dirty martini, a plate of oysters, a delicious steak dripping with bone marrow butter. But it’s also a casual restaurant, great for grabbing burgers and beers with friends, or having breakfast with the kids – one night my three-year-old and I were mesmerized by the vintage TV tubes installed above the bar, playing warm classic movies. It’s also a little tacky: The bathroom is filled with eighties baseball memorabilia and colorful party lights that remind me of many bar mitzvahs I attended in my youth. Families arrive to grab a seat; as the night falls, the tables are filled with dates and double dates. I’m not quite sure what kind of restaurant Trudie’s thought it was, or wanted to be, or how exactly it wanted me to feel, but oddly enough, that ambiguity ended up evolving into something wonderful: a little calm, a little rough, a mixture of crisp ironing and easygoingness that wasn’t quite emulsified.
The menu is a similar hodgepodge. There are comfort food elements here that echo the “tavern” part of the restaurant’s name, like giant fluffy pretzels sprinkled with salt, or a fat pig in a blanket covered in bagel seasoning. But there are finer things in the kitchen, like swordfish on a late-summer pool pepper and watermelon gazpacho, and potato pancakes smothered in dill and cucumber crème fraîche and sprinkled with smoked trout and orange-bubbled tobiko roe. Of course, it’s a hash brown, even though the menu doesn’t call it a hash brown. Trudie’s is the least overtly Jewish of the couple’s three restaurants, but the menu incorporates themes from Jewish American cuisine: egg noodles, cucumber salad, miles of savory dishes, even a martini floating on top. One of the things I love most about these restaurants is how they play with memory and tradition without becoming contrived or clunky, or—the worst restaurant sin of all—sad. Trudie’s serves snow crab, three marshmallow-white crab claws chilled on ice with a dab of dijonne sauce. It’s a dish borrowed directly from Miami Beach fixture Joe’s Stone Crab, which despite being completely non-kosher in almost every way is arguably the most kosher restaurant in the city’s history, at least in a Philip Roth sense.
Sherry Cobbler.
The menu is overseen by chef Mike Cain and features hits. One night I stopped, put my knife to the steak, and watched a plate of rotisserie chicken pass through the restaurant next to a pile of crispy baked potatoes. Served with a spoonful of a creamy white and green cucumber salad garnished with dill (a recipe from another of Adler’s grandmothers), and a full plate of gravy, which I discovered the next time I ordered was a thick, onion-sweet chicken gravy with a sharp hint of vinegar. The highlight is the lamb schnitzel, which is perhaps the restaurant’s biggest draw. Schnitzel usually refers to more delicate, tender cuts of meat—chicken breast, veal fillet. But pounded, breaded and deep-fried, topped with generous amounts of sweet and sharp blackberry sauce, and topped with a confetti of whole blackberries and mint leaves, the lamb version is as wonderful as it is bizarre, a symphony of strong-willed flavours. It reminded me of a meal that might feature in a lush, slightly ominous Central European folktale, with a twist, cowboy-style chicken-fried steak.
The portions are generous, but it would be a mistake not to include the sides, various salads, cooked vegetables and other bits and pieces that showcase the kitchen’s most reliable work. You could make a dreamy bowl of garlic-steamed Rancho Gordo butter beans, paired with sparkling, savory Schmalz fried rice studded with some crunchy gribbins, and maybe a fresh green salad — simply slathered in a bright, sunny vinaigrette — to cut through all the richness. Rotisserie-cooked cabbage cubes in a funky anchovy-rich vinaigrette might have been a little more resistant to the fire. (So, on some nights, the service can be a little on the warm side.) Also save room for a side of banana split and pretzel ice cream, or a cake, three towering layers of carrot sponge with coconut filling and rich cream cheese frosting. Here’s a slice of the whole restaurant: sweet and not-so-sweet, a little happy with one thing, a little happy with another. ❖