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The menu at Beast + Bottle, the ever-packed restaurant launched this spring by brother-and-sister duo Paul and Aileen Reilly, is surprising in many ways. For starters, the menu features an abundance of unfamiliar ingredients and cooking terms, as I note in this week’s review. Then there’s the fact that the kitchen pays as much homage to seasonal produce as it does to the lambs and hogs butchered in-house.
Perhaps most surprising, though, is the scarcity of offal.
See also:
– From farm-to-fork, nose-to-tail, this restaurant is full of delightful surprises
– Photos: Behind the scenes at Beast + Bottle
– Can siblings work together? At Beast + Bottle, it’s all relative
“I had somebody come in and ask about offal,” says Paul Reilly, referring to the organs and entrails that most people associate with nose-to-tail cooking. “But every single time [we butcher an animal], we get one liver and two kidneys, and that doesn’t go very far.”
The solution, he adds, has been to package and freeze the organs until there’s enough to create a dish that they can put on the menu for a few days — such as pig’s trotters showcased in trotter meatballs.
If you’re the type who thinks offal sounds awful, don’t worry: There’s plenty of fish, pasta and vegetables, not to mention more common cuts of meat, to choose from on this worldly, well-executed menu.
