Cactus Wren, a caller spot that the 2 opened successful February, connected Ludlow and Rivington Streets, is likewise sui generis, successful that it seems broadly divorced from trends and wholly uninterested successful capturing immoderate benignant of Zeitgeist. It tells a spot of a story, with recurring references to the American Southwest (the edifice is named aft the authorities vertebrate of Arizona, a wee brownish blob of fluff known for its sputtering-motor call), but mostly it’s a room that’s doing its ain thing. The paper is choky and snacky, elegant and gimmicky, precocious and low. In its pursuit of, well, immoderate the hellhole it’s pursuing, Cactus Wren explodes categories, successful a mode that feels unaffected and invigorating. Ingredients and techniques are woven and swapped from crockery to dish, arsenic if successful a kitchen-pantry crippled of Mad Libs. Of people a whopping scoop of osetra caviar should apical a vessel of seven-layer legume dip, which includes a ruffly collar of tiny murphy chips; it’s nary fussier oregon higher-concept than presenting a quenelle of roe with crème fraîche and blini. Why not fry chickenhearted wings successful an airy batter and sprinkle them with jalapeño powder? They sensation some aggravated and beautifully light, and look similar elephantine matcha-colored beignets. Meanwhile, the existent beignets astatine Cactus Wren are filled with hunks of langoustine, takoyaki-style, and seasoned with Old Bay, precise Maryland; the Maryland shrimp, successful turn, get piled connected tiny triangles of sandwich breadstuff and deep-fried, arsenic an homage to shrimp toast, the dim-sum classic, which comes with a precise non-dim-sum broadside of green-goddess condiment for dipping.
Every crockery feels similar a large swing, oregon contains a small wink. An entrée of pork ribs—short-cut, massively meaty, rubbed with southwestern spices and slow-cooked to collapsing tenderness—comes atop a excavation of bittersweet salsa roja, with a broadside of jalapeño-studded maize breadstuff baked into the signifier of a saguaro cactus. I mightiness beryllium tempted to telephone it TikTok bait, but that the edifice wears the gag truthful lightly that it feels scrappy and sincere. Not a azygous bite, successful immoderate of my visits, elicited a enactment of regret: sure, the wood-fired pizzas work a tad much similar flatbreads, with yeasty crusts that deficiency a pizza’s due drawback and chew, but I nevertheless adored a seasonal pastry topped with brushed morel mushrooms and a pesto arsenic greenish and lush arsenic the woods successful a rainstorm, and a simpler 1 dressed with gooey Comté and a drizzle of honey. (You tin adhd caviar to that 1 for an other forty-five dollars—a acold nicer location for small luxuries than the somewhat engaged legume dip, and the caviar is ladled retired successful different obscene portion.)
The abstraction is agleam and open, with precocious ceilings and ample windows that item the eternally terrific people-watching of the Lower East Side. The mint country determination is the erstwhile location of an outpost of Serafina, a concatenation known for its wood-fired pizzas, which explains the tremendous domed oven taking up a 4th of the eating room. The oven, with its colorful tiles is somewhat visually cacophonous, fixed the understated rusticity of the remainder of the room. Glowy porcelain airy fixtures, translucent achromatic streaked with rivers of darkness, springiness the content of the nacreous interiors of oyster shells, oregon molded slices of Gorgonzola. They’re the enactment of the creator Nicole Pilar, who besides made the interestingly multi-textured, organic-shaped platters connected which galore of the courses astatine 63 Clinton are served. At Cactus Wren, these platters amusement up beneath the appetizer of fruits de mer, a crockery appealingly sized for one, featuring a rotating enactment of composed bites that connected my visits included dressed earthy oysters and clams, Jonah-crab claws, and a Gilda skewer of earthy tuna and shiso leaf. Indeed, the edifice strikes maine arsenic a cleanable prime for solo dining: belly up to the barroom for a solid from the beardown vino list, which foregrounds tiny producers, and bid thing to nibble on, oregon dive into, oregon bask in. On 1 of my visits, I recovered myself seated adjacent to a pistillate indulging, with exquisite poise, successful a solid of wine, a book, and what seemed to beryllium each azygous caviar crockery connected the menu. There’s a acquisition determination for america all: it’s important, sometimes, to bash precisely what you privation to do, and to fto yourself bask it. ♦
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