Semilla, New York 2016
As most restaurants with "confidence" Semilla doesn't advertise its presence to the outside. It would be easy to walk by and miss this place (or even notice there's a restaurant located here from the discrete sign and rusty steel outside).
The inside consists of a U-shaped bar where diners are seated on either end. The servers utilize the space in-between to serve the customers, a truly great use of the narrow space.
Semilla (spanish for "seed") is a vegetable forward restaurant which only includes fish or meat in dishes when extra depth of intensity in a dish is needed. This is a great starting-point for creating interesting dishes that doesn't revolve around meat in particular, a concept that got us excited.
We're greeted by our charming server Brittany which helps us pick an interesting Pinot Gris from Crooked Acres Vineyard.
The menu starts off with a lovely corn broth with cuttlefish. The dishes are very light and clean.
The bread here is simply outstanding!
The set menu at Semilla is very seasonally focused and we noticed a heavy focus on highlighting tomatoes in several of our dishes.
We left the restaurant happy, but none of the dishes left a lasting memory on us. Clean, fresh and seasonal, but nothing that truly excited us.