In Nobody’s Shadow
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Gordon Ramsay has built a bleeped-out television career on advising chefs, so it’s definitely interesting to visit the restaurant of Ramsay’s ex-lieutenant. Neil Ferguson worked under Mr. Ramsay for more than a decade, and headed up the television chef’s first American restaurant until he was dismissed, reportedly for being too gentle with his underlings.
Mr. Ferguson has stayed in New York, moving just a few miles downtown to the corner of Allen and Delancey streets. Hence the namesake restaurant. The new Lower East Side eatery has a hefty dose of uptown-style panache, but it’s unmistakably a downtown establishment. The décor is carefully, expensively shabby, with old books and lots of raw wood and brick, and the lighting is as dim as a mine.
The food is probably beautifully presented, but in the dark it’s anybody’s guess. The menu is short and meat-focused, with the same clean, discrete tastes of the Ramsay restaurant made significantly more interesting. Heartier, too: There are a lot of deep, smoky flavors, and a ton of butter holding it all together. Two slices of a layered terrine ($18) make a great starter: It comprises a stratum of tender, gamy guinea hen, a smoky pig’s knuckle, chunked and pressed, and smooth foie gras. It’s like a sumptuous study in the varieties of variety meats, and not the only one; joining it among the appetizers are roasted bone marrow with caviar ($18) and a raviolo filled with sweetbreads ($15).
But Mr. Ferguson does as well with lighter fare, such as a carpaccio of pink yellowtail ($13) whose mellow richness is exquisitely accented with the faint bitterness of grapefruit and curls of pickled fennel strewn on top. It’s the sort of simple, elegant dish that many chefs attempt but that too often comes out plain and uninspired.
He crisps a skin-on filet of mackerel ($15), rendering out some of the fatty fish’s excess and leaving it with a savory firmness. To complement the rich fish with bacon and sautéed gnocchi would be too much of a good thing if done with any less finesse, but here discretion, and a mitigating slosh of cider vinegar, helps maintain an excellent balance.
The same kind of subtlety works for a pork-belly main course ($22). The popularity of this ingredient has inflicted some undistinguished gobs of pork fat on the restaurant-going public, but it’s possible to do excellent things with it. Allen & Delancey’s version comes from Alsace by way of Asia, with a keen complement of firm parsnips and hunks of pickled pear offsetting the potentially overwhelming influence of the meat. The belly itself is cooked long enough that its fatty component recedes into the background. Syrup flavored with fenugreek gives an intriguing maple-esque sweetness to the dish.
“Cabbage, beef, and onion” ($29) is considerably more of a symphonic production than its humble name would suggest. The composed plate positions a small hunk of rib-eye steak alongside a neat bundle of green Savoy cabbage containing finely shredded braised beef with the savor of wine. A hollowed-out sweet onion is filled in turn with shredded cabbage, and a fussy Napoleonic stack of perfectly squared slices of potato, smokily flavored with what the waiter called “ham oil” and capped with dark caramelized onion, completes the arrangement.
The first dessert I tried (all $10), a simple affair of sugary pineapple stuffed into a pastry shell, was dull and disappointing, but it turned out to be an aberration. On a second visit, each was better than the last: A ramekin-less crème brûlée flavored with sour-sweet passion fruit and paired with intriguing curry-spiced ice cream stood out, but paled next to a luxurious tart. In the latter, gooey dark chocolate and salty peanut butter make a stunning marriage, with a scoop of creamy malted-milk sorbet; alongside, a little milkshake of ice cream and whisky gives the childish dessert an adult kick.
Mr. Ferguson certainly knows how to cook, but other aspects of the restaurant are less sure. At a different sort of downtown restaurant, it would pass for casualness, but here, in such a careful environment, it feels sloppy. The wine list is quite limited, considering the ambitious scope of the food, especially the by-the-glass choices: just four reds, none of them French. Service can slow to a vague, apologetic molasses, and the design choices that have given the restaurant capacious, gloomy eating areas but just one little bathroom are singularly unfriendly. Food with this kind of star potential deserves a brighter, less cluttered stage.
Allen & Delancey (115 Allen St., at Delancey Street, 212-253-5400)