133 Essex Street – Lower East Side
http://sonsofessexles.com/index.html
Comfort Food, Cocktails

Sons of Essex is a Lower East Side hip restaurant with party atmosphere. The space is huge and decor is rustic. The food is meh at best, but clearly it isn’t about the food.

We are about to embark upon 12 days of great food and libation. The kickoff was Sons of Essex for Steve’s birthday. The idea was to go to a spot with a cool atmosphere to kick off a celebratory evening.

We were seated at a little round cocktail table stuffed between two others. It was just about the worst spot in the joint, but there were many more really big tables for giant parties. And they pack ’em in every inch of the joint. This would be a great spot for a party, actually. Steve asked what I would call the decor and my first comment was Kozy, Kavernous Kabin with Kocktails for Kool People. The k’s just represent the inauthenticity of it all. Rustic, Reclaimed and Refurbished are also good words. Typical new LES hipness. But after really looking around I noticed most every guy was a total uber-dork with a good looking woman. And I don’t mean uber-dork in the intentional hipster way with skinny jeans, facial hair and black glasses. I really just mean geeks. Interesting mix. That was about the most interesting thing about the place.

The food was really krappy. I began with a painfully dry Kale Caesar salad, Steve had what I am calling Krab melts which were mini crab cake open faced sliders and we had two mac and cheeses. One was what I’d describe as ‘truffly,’ meaning lacking its key flavoring and the other a stinky soggy crouton gruyere mess. But the pickles were fucking awesome. They come from Guss’ LES pickle shop.

KALE CAESAR SALAD ($14)
organic purple and green essex st. market kale, kossar bialy croutons, caesar dressing, shaved parmesan
This in not my photo, clearly this person had dressing!

CLINTON STREET LUMP CRAB MELTS ($15)
pan seared lump crab cakes served open faced on toasted mini brioche buns topped with sliced guss’ pickles and cheddar cheese
No photo, but mediocre bar food so who cares?

FRENCH ONION MAC N CHEESE ($14)
elbow macaroni, sautéed onions, brioche croutons, gruyere
TRUFFLE MAC N CHEESE ($16)
elbow macaroni, gruyere truffle cheese sauce
Meh. And not pretty.

So now, the cocktails. After all, this is more of a cocktail bar!

We love a Moscow Mule, so we both opted for the nothing special, low in alcohol
MOSCOW FIVE POINTS ($13)
russian standard, lime juice, chinese 5 spice, agave, fresh muddled ginger, red wine float
After, we both switched to beer…Guinness and Brooklyn Lager

We will not be headed back anytime soon. Ok, ever.