Brooklyn N.Y.
Website:http://www.monkeytownhq.com
Cuisine: “classic dishes from a country that doesn’t exist”
Capacity: 75
Most popular dish: warm turtle salad with swamp cabbage, poached egg and lardon
Chef: Ryan Jaronik
Sommelier: Rubén Sanz Ramiro
Owner: Montgomery Knott
“Rattlesnake is out of season, so tonight’s menu will feature python instead,” announced Monkey Town owner Montgomery Knott to a group of 35 diners who gathered at his restaurant on a recent Tuesday night to sample a variety of amphibians and reptiles.
The six-course, prix-fixe, swamp-theme dinner was $50 with wine pairings, and the menu included fine-dining standards like snails and frogs’ legs, alongside turtle, python and alligator. The dessert, a chocolate turtle cake, was chosen for the pun in its name, not for any reptilian ingredients.
Knott says the restaurant, located in a converted garage in the trendy Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, has held theme dinners since its beginning, but they really have taken off under the helm of chef Ryan Jaronik, who joined Monkey Town just over a year ago.
Jaronik explains that the swamp dinner came from an idea he had been thinking about for several years. “The idea came into my head when I was using a purveyor in Chicago who had a lot of wild game, anything from lions to alligator to rattlesnake,” he says. “It was not anything we would have done there — it was a Latin restaurant — but when I moved here, I thought now is as good a time as any to go for it and have a little fun and be able to cook with some really exotic animals.”
Monkey Town typically creates about four to six theme dinners per year. The menus are posted on the restaurant’s website and emailed to its mailing list. Upcoming theme menus at Monkey Town include a forest dinner, with game like elk and wild boar, and an outer space-theme dinner.
Knott says the theme dinners typically sell out. They are held in Monkey Town’s backroom event space, which includes four large video screens and room for 32 diners seated on low couches around the edges of the room. Audio and video elements are designed to support the menus’ themes.
When there isn’t a theme dinner going on, the restaurant seats 75 in the front and backrooms, Knott says. And the eclectic, global menu has been described as “classic dishes from a country that doesn’t exist.”
The menu rotates seasonally, and current menu items include tandoori lamb sliders with house-pickled mango and roasted tomato relish, and chipotle-crusted salmon with curried beets, as well as spiced carrot juice and squash raita.
“It’s not like post-modern food or anything,” Knott says. “But it’s definitely innovative. But it seems like comfort food. It’s just comfort food that you haven’t had before.”
In spite of a clientele that is accustomed to more avant-garde offerings, Knott reports that the swamp dinner was poorly attended compared with other theme dinners.
“We had people calling up and saying, ‘Are you really serving python? Are you really serving alligator?’ And we were like, ‘Yes, we really are,’ ” he says. “Also we were really late with our promotion of it, so it didn’t get much press. Our next one will get a lot more coverage.”
The dinners often sell out. One sold out eight seatings, he says. “The swamp dinner problem was bad PR and too weird of food.”
“Weird” is relative, though, and the swamp dinner had a very successful seating with a group called the Gastronauts, a 3-year-old dining club with 150 members committed to trying food they haven’t tasted before. Achiote-roasted python isn’t that “out there” for people who enjoy eating insects or live octopus, but “[Gastronauts] isn’t always about the most adventurous thing,” club co-founder Curtiss Calleo says. “It’s more about exploring different things. … The turtle was very good.”
According to Knott, the turtle salad was the biggest hit of the swamp menu, and he’s considering bringing it on full-time when Monkey Town switches to its winter menu.
“Turtle goes really well with bacon,” Jaronik says. “And the classic turtle soup is kind of heavily studded with bacon when I’ve made it, so I decided to reinterpret that into a Lyonnaise-style salad with lardon and poached egg. … It’s very warming, and in [winter], the salad is very satisfying.”
Swamp Dinner - Prix Fixe $50
crispy herbed snails goat cheese broth, red onion fondue
frog leg terrine frisée, walnuts, truffle, sherry vinaigrette
achiote roasted python green chile risotto, sweet corn béchamel
warm turtle salad swamp cabbage, poached egg, lardon
alligator a l’indienne vindaloo smoked potatoes, mango relish, natural jus
chocolate turtle cake mint gelato, lavender caramel