#hglocal
Last week honeygrow invited us to attend their intimate Pop-Up Dinner. honeygrow or hg as they refer to in their logo, is a fairly new honest, healthy, farm to table eatery. hg was founded in 2012 by Justin Rosenberg in Philadelphia, and has been quickly expanding. Soon we will have one in our own backyard!
Like every cool Brooklyn party these days, we arrived to a huge industrial building. This happens to be the old Pfizer building in Williamsburg, which is now Brooklyn FoodWorks, a space that offers a platform to prototype, launch and develop new food concepts. Hello Pop-Up Dinner! As we arrived to our room, we were greeted by members of the hg team, before entering into a beautiful open space. At first glance, you are taken in by the 3 large communal tables with open seating, a beer and wine station, followed by the massive open kitchen behind a glass wall. This was exciting, because at all times you could see everything going on behind the scenes. We all mingled and got to know each other, then sat down to enjoy the celebration dinner, being held to give the movers and shakers of the foodie world a taste of whats coming to Brooklyn next week.
Justin Rosenberg, the founder of hg along side David Katz, the culinary director, introduced themselves and explained the concept and mission behind hg. honeygrow promises to bring people together over the highest quality, wholesome, simple foods. They were very adamant about using seasonal, local sourced ingredients, and everything being made from scratch, giving us the freshest food possible; this was pleasing to hear! What’s also great, is that honeygrow allows you to be chef, with their “create- your own” stir-fry, salad and honey bars. Justin and David made our mouths water as they went over there 3 course tasting menu: Greens, Noodles, and Sweets.
For Greens, we had the MAKE IT GRAIN salad (orange sherry vinaigrette, wheat berries, red quinoa, organic arugula, grapes, roasted carrots, feta, and roasted cashews), served family style. Boy was this yummy. The dressing was perfect, and the salad had many tantalizing ingredients, which had everyone reaching for seconds as we chatted and sipped on wine.
What followed was the FRESH made noodles! We feasted on two creations. The first was the Shanghai-style noodles with sea urchin, in a slow cooked cherry tomato scallion secret sauce. Their noodles were cooked perfectly, they had enough bite and held up like the best of them. Although I had never had sea urchin, this was my favorite dish. The sea urchin gave the noodles a creamy, sea salt flavor, that you just have to try for yourself to fully understand. The other was the wide noodles with red miso sauce, pork shoulder, buttered corn, and fried shallots. What can I say, another well composed dish. They both had complex flavors and were oh so satisfying. I really appreciate that they severed us two different types of noodles so that we got to compare them.
For Sweet, we were served organic vanilla yogurt, with caramelized bananas, chocolate tahini, orange blossom honey, and toasted sesame seeds. Talk about a yogurt made for grown ups. I loved this so much that I asked for seconds, the honey, toasted sesame combo was like the hot fudge poured over a sundae.
I walked away happy and my belly full of wholesome foods. hg were excellent hosts, from the moment you entered, till the moment you left, they made you feel at home. They made sure all our dinning needs were met, answered all of our questions, and gifted us an hg tote, which contained a gift card to use when we dine at the new spot. Score!
Come one, Come all and try all of these delicious dishes, or make your own creation!
honeygrow will be opening on Monday April 3rd, and located at 194 Joralemon in Downtown Brooklyn.
