Gold Dig #60

Otium is a downtown establishment that regularly sits pretty high on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list. It is a gorgeous glassed-in space that opens into the kitchen (you actually walk through the kitchen to get to the bathroom), and an outdoor patio with lovely landscaping, a view of the rooftop herb garden, and a fire pit where we relaxed while waiting to be seated.

The Dish

Otium’s contemporary American cuisine heavily features wood fired food – you can see the giant stacks of fire wood to the right of the open kitchen. Above the kitchen you’ll also notice shelves of donabe (Japanese clay pots), which several of the dishes utilize in a non-traditional manner.

Khachapouri

Khachapouri is cheese-filled bread, and what’s not to love about cheese-filled bread!? The bread and cheese base would have been delicious on its own, and then it was topped with prosciutto, Aleppo pepper, and a perfectly cooked egg that looked like the white might be runny but wasn’t at all. Yum!

Berkshire Pork Belly

Two beautiful pieces of pork belly were fried and served on a corn cake with broccolini, dates, and a garlic citrus sauce. The flavors came together really nicely, though the pork belly was drier and tougher than I could have hoped for.

Crispy Chicken special

Of course I had to try something in a donabe, so we were sold when our waiter told us about the crispy chicken special. The best way I can describe this dish is elevated chicken and waffles meets bananas foster. It was like a main course and dessert all in one. Really tasty, though I don’t really understand how the donabe was used other than for presentation.