Demo is a cute, bustling wine bar with delicious food, efficient service, and of course, fantastic wine. It may be on the newer side, but it's already operating like a well-oiled machine. The chefs at Demo met at the restaurant Wildair, which was one of the early "foodie"-type restaurants I went to when I was first getting into the NYC restaurant scene in 2015. At the time, I had said it was one of the best -- if not the best -- meals I'd ever had. I wouldn't say the food here bears a ton of similarity to the menu I had at Wildair back then, but the product is just as delicious, with the same subtle creativity and pitch perfect execution.
We came here at 8:45 on a Saturday night. We were seated quickly and brought water immediately after. Always appreciate when a restaurant leaves a bottle of water at the table. Demo just has wine, so we tried a few different wines by the class to sample more of the menu. I first started with an orange wine which was absolutely delicious. On the lighter side, so a perfect one to start with. I hadn't heard of any of the wines on the menu despite being a natural wine lover, so I fully relied on our server to steer us in a good direction based on our preferences. My husband started with a sparkling wine that he also liked. We then each tried a different white wine and both were fantastic. The one I liked the most was an unfiltered chenin blanc.
Food-wise, they recommend sharing a bunch of plates, which is my general approach anyway. The menu is divided into cold apps, hot apps, mains, and desserts. We ended up getting a nice mix of proteins and produce and we enjoyed every bite. Eats, below:
Mackerel w/ gribiche, pickled shallots: A+
Our first dish out was excellent and unique. I've had many iterations of raw/cured seafood in my life, and I'm pretty sure I'd never seen it served with gribiche (a cold egg sauce, a little bit like egg salad). I was a little wary at first because in my mind these things don't intuitively go together, but the pairing was fantastic. It went well with the relatively thick slices of mackerel and the nice tang from the shallots.
Marinated Squid w/ ajo blanco, market radish: A+
This is the one my husband was wary of because he was not convinced that cold, un-breaded squid would be good. I really wanted to try it and our server said it was one of their favorite things on the menu, so we went for it. My husband was pleasantly surprised that he loved this dish and he raved about it all night. It was fresh and bright with subtle and delicate flavors.
Chopped Radicchio w/ tahini, citrus, za'atar crumble: A
A wonderful winter salad with radicchio, some endive, a little fennel, lots of bitter greens that paired nicely with the nuttiness of the tahini and citrus notes of the dressing.
Asparagus w/ romesco: A
Probably the least exciting of the things we ordered but delicious all the same. In a gesture of excitement my husband accidentally flung an asparagus spear off the table and we had to sheepishly tell the server, but perhaps this is just a sign of how much we enjoyed our time here.
Half Chicken w/ tokyo turnips, vin jaune: A+
A juicy and comforting roasted chicken served with a heavenly sauce. The turnips were also taking a nice bath in the sauce. We couldn't quite finish it because we were pretty full at the end but we did our best to conquer it because it was that good. read more