Nothing ordinary happens at the McKittrick Hotel, the redone building on Manhattan’s West Side that serves as the home of the long running Macbeth reimagined performance piece ‘Sleep No More’ and special productions such as ‘At the Illusionist’s Table,’ a sellout last year that returns in September. Even meals at their rooftop restaurant Gallow Green, designed as a Scottish train station surrounded by a garden and now open for the summer season, start off strangely as you enter in darkness and ascend in the similarly darkened elevator. (But at least one member of a couple isn’t thrown out at an arbitrary floor, as happens to attendees of ‘Sleep No More.’) Still, it’s disorientating and even more reason to try out one of the newly announced Bloody Marys when you reach the top level for brunch.
Among the five choices, some linked in name to the performance piece below and all containing novel ingredients for a Bloody Mary are Lady M, composed of vodka, McKittrick Bloody Blend, pickled green beans, lemon and celery; Sunday, Bloody Sunday with dill-infused vodka, McKittrick Bloody Blend, tapenade, dill, cherry tomatoes and bocconcino and the Bloody Banquo with vodka, McKittrick Bloody Blend, hickory smoke and spices, angus beef broth, beef jerky and pickled okra.
At brunch, there’s a buffet created by group chef Pascal Le Seac’h that includes a bakery table with croissants and mini cinnamon buns, Greek yogurt with granola and fresh fruit, a cold station with quinoa, beet, tomato and shrimp salads, a hot buffet with fried chicken and moussaka and a carving station with roast suckling pig and whole baked salmon plus an omelet station. There’s a band, MK Groove, at brunch playing music ranging from lively to raucous, especially if you’re sitting in the area of private tables. (But that’s preferable to the other side with long, communal, picnic style tables.)
Dinner is calmer with dishes such as tuna crudo, grilled octopus, sautéed soft shell crabs, steak skewers and pizzas from the wood burning oven, and there are couches as a cocktail lounge. All are open until October when the dining action moves indoors to the mountain lodge- like creation The Lodge at Gallow Green.
