Look Inside The Old Sage, Opening Tonight!

Grid View

• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]
• [Photo: S. Pratt]

After a soft opening and lots of menu tasting, The Old Sage is opening tonight, next door to its older sibling, Tavern Law.

What you need to know: The Old Sage, owned by Dana Tough and Brian McCracken (Spur, Coterie Room, Tavern Law), is not a barbecue or charcuterie joint — it's smoked meats; you can expect to pay a little less than what you'd spend on dinner at Spur; there are banquettes, lots of communal tables and bar seats; The Old Sage is open daily from 5 pm to close; the menu is heavy on smoked meats and vegetables, the focus being on both; as the photo gallery suggests, the place is most stunning in the evening, when the dark interior is set off by flickering candles, dim lighting, and a fireplace.

And now, a menu cheat-sheet to help you maneuver your inaugural visit.

MEATS (all are uniquely smoked):

Torchon of Foie Gras
Smoked with pine-needles.

Virginia Air Cured Ham
This is the only thing the boys are flying in. It's an Edwards Surryano ham From Virginia. Hickory smoked and air cured. They make the malt mustard.

Amberjack
Smoked with hickory.

Sockeye Salmon
Smoked with corn husks.

Alaskan Black Cod
Smoked with bamboo.

Pork Cheeks
Smoked with lavender and lavender branches.

Mad Hatcher Chicken Leg
Smoked with rosemary and rosemary branches.

Beef Short Rib
Smoked with mesquite (if anything on the menu is reminiscent of barbecue, it's this).

VEGETABLES & STARCHES:

Puffed Sour Bread
Basically, solid beer. It's malted with wild fennel pollen that the duo handpick and add to the dough. Think of this as a really sour air pocket that puffs up in the big hearth oven and arrives to your table like a big balloon. Tear it apart, dip it in extra virgin olive oil and sea salt.

Butter Flake Bread
Layered with butter and cooked in a cast-iron pan. As Dana calls it, "Pillsbury Doughboy on crack."

Pickled Vegetables
Three kinds: vinegar pickled, koji pickled and fermented.

Matled Emmer
Sprouted and smoked, kind of like how you smoke malt whiskey for scotch.

Pot Roast Carrots
Cooked in a highly gelatinous stock, which dehydrates the carrots as they cook, thus, concentrating the flavor. These are cooked to order and seared, whipped with buttermilk, pine nuts and watercress. The color is amazingly bright.

Oven Roasted Cabbage Roots
Kohlrabi and whatever else the two are inspired by. Ham broth made out of the odds and ends of a pig friend is poured over the top.

Roasted and Raw Gourds
Summer squash, melons and cucumbers. Very pretty.

· Here's a First Look at The Old Sage Menu [~ESEA~]
· The Old Sage [Official Site]
· McCracken & Tough [Official Site]