Modern Jewy cuisine in NY - Octavia's Porch

Octavia's porch is a homey, cozy spot in the Lower East Side that serves Modern Jewy cuisine and serves as a perfect destination for a catch up amongst friends.  With former Top Chef contestant Nikki Cascone behind it, this gem has it's on spin on Jewish classics, pulling New York out of its "Jewish - Deli" mentality and into your Yiddish mother's kitchen.

Boozy egg cream cocktail

The cocktail menu is awesome with their home made cream sodas and their house made pickles in their drinks.  Their boozy egg creme cocktail was a favourite amongst the table with chocolate vodka spiked in frothy egg cream which looked like a milkshake.  This was a reunion of sorts and seeing all these great people made me nostalgic and I decided to splurge to ensure we were boozed up by ordering bottles of the $35 Malbec, one of my favorite varietals.  One thing to note, if you go with a party over 4 and want a family style dinner, the restaurant offers you bottomless manischewitz sangria.  At first I was very excited about the prospect of this but due to my Jewish and non Jew friends looks of disgust at this idea (I was informed later on that manischewitz is god awful sweet); we decided to forgo this idea. 

Mushroom cerviche

After our drinks were ordered, we were brought delicious mini challah loaf to pass around and start with. 
We all decided to share a series of appetizers and they were all delicious. 
Mushroom fennel cerviche was ordered and passed around the table - it was light and pleasant.  I have actually never had a cerviche that wasn't fish related so this was a new item for me and it was very good!

Kreplach!

The wild mushroom knish was a huge hit around the table and we had to order another one.   It was flaky phillo pastry filled with wild mushrooms in a creamy broth like sauce.. om nom nom! On a side note- I love the word 'k-nish'!
Another highlight was the beef and veal kreplach.  

Matzoh Ball soup

We joked originally about the 'kreplach' as it was thought to be a terrible thing that Homer ate on the 'Simpsons' but it turned out to be some kind of wonderful.  It was like a hot and soft dumpling with some amazing sweet Asian tang.  It's an absolute recommend!!
Being at a typically jewish restaurant, I needed to order the house made matzo ball soup of course! It was an atypical version to the soup you usually get as it came with a full garden of fun stuff!  There were whole brussel sprouts, chicken and more interesting veggies like yellow squash and who knows what else.  The matzoh balls (there were 2) were large and fluffy.  I think I could've done without the soup as firstly it was hard to share and I wasn't feeling it during dinner.
Lastly we had the chicken liver pate salad which was a good idea as well, rich and packed with flavour.

Chicken Liver pate

For mains:
I had the Long Island duck breast which was prepared well although there were some fatty pockets to it but came with sweet potato latkas and warm vanilla-apple sauce which was a nice trade off;  the whole roasted fish was done well, fish was tender and flaky and the presentation was gorgeou; Wild salmon was another order which fared well amongst the diners.
All in all it was an amazing Shabbat-esque dinner and a fantastic reunion amongst friends.  We were lucky to have private dining room to ourselves to laugh and indulge over good plates of food.  Definitely would come back again!  The service was quick and friendly and mostly accommodating.  A very big thank you to Sarah for organizing all of us at this unique little restaurant in LES! 

**** stars
Octavia's Porch
40 Ave B
New York, NY 10009
Neighborhoods: East Village, Alphabet City
(212) 677-4096
www.octaviasporch.com