Claud

90 E 10th St New York, NY 10003

The menu reads casual but doesn’t fail to impress. The pâté en croûte: elegant, glistening, seasoned with the sort of self-respect too many kitchens have forgotten. The bread and cultured butter, a simple trap, arrives warm, salt-flecked, and dangerous. You will, inevitably, eat too much of it.

Then there’s Claud’s calling-card brilliance: the clam toast. A swagger of a dish, plump clams slicked with butter and wine, perched on thick toast that soaks and resists in equal measure. It’s messy, luxurious, and precisely the kind of food you pretend you won’t finish, then do. The mains lean bold but never flashy. A pork chop blushing at the bone, crusted just enough to remind you why searing exists. Or a fish dish so delicately cooked you’ll swear the kitchen has a direct line to The Atlantic. Vegetables like carrots, greens, whatever’s best that day, are treated with suspicion until they prove their worth, then elevated with an almost maternal tenderness. Terrific wine selection, might want to try a few.