SD26 is a modern Italian cuisine restaurant located at 19 Madison Square Park (26 St between 5th and Madison Avenues) in NYC. Quoting Opentable.com:
The modern, sexy, upbeat SD26 Restaurant, designed by Massimo Vignelli, is co-owned by legendary father daughter restaurateurs Tony May & Marisa May. SD26 brings a dining experience that is both special and seductive and sets the scene in first class Italian style for tasting of contemporary flavors that are unmistakably Italian created by Executive Chef Odette Fada and Chef de Cuisine Matteo Bergamini.
Exciting SD26 Wine Bar with electronic Enomatic wine dispensers and SD26 smart cards is a great way to be your own sommelier!
I had a chance to dine here for lunch today for Restaurant Week with a colleague. I ordered the following off the $24 Prix Fixe menu:
Appetizer: Tuna lightly seared in guanciale, puntarelle salad
Dessert: Panna cotta, balsamic vinegar reduction, fresh figs (they swapped the figs with strawberries
Wine: Syrah
My thoughts: The tuna salad was probably the best I’ve ever had. Seared to perfection. Served in perfect medallions. (Sorry for not taking a photo of it). The bass was, for lack of a better term, tasty. Not like the regular sea bass I’m accustomed to, but it was quite a delicious white flesh fish. I gotta try to cook fregola sarda – might be my new favorite pasta. Now the dessert, the speckles of vanilla (as shown in the photo below) is a hint that, man, this is gonna taste very vanilla-ey, which I don’t mind at all. Moving on, yes, the panna cotta was awesome. I’m still reminiscing about the taste of it. The balsamic reduction, bah…you don’t need it. It’s just there for decoration, at least to me it was. I sure do wish there were figs, instead of strawberries.
My colleague ordered a la carte:
Spinach and pear salad with Grana Padano
Lamb chops, mint cous cous, black Mission figs and fennel
Wine: Merlot
I didn’t try my colleague’s salad, as it looked pretty ordinary to me, except that it was doused in balsamic vinegar. The lamb chops were sensational. Cooked medium-rare – the chops melt in your mouth. The fennel was delicious. I’m not sure how it was prepared but I’m not a big fan of fennel, but I liked it.
Getting a case of the writer’s block, so to end the post, yes I would dine here again, and perhaps try the items off the Salumeria menu.
Restaurant Week runs from January 25th to February 7th. Check out the participating restaurants here.
