Sexy Mother Foodies go to restaurants named for a single ingredient. Often run by women, they embody the brilliant simplicity of granny’s cooking mixed with Food Network savoir faire. They inspire adjectives like “homespun” and tend to serve comfort food that is sure to be “rustic” and “pure.”
Todd English owns not one, but two restaurants named for single ingredients.
Prominent examples include:
Butter
Egg
Olives
Figs
Quince
Toast
Such restaurants have launched the careers of Alex Guarnaschelli (Chopped) and Todd English (listed among Forbes Top 100 Celebrities).
Perhaps the greatest example is Prune—Gabrielle Hamilton’s iconic Manhattan hotspot. She went on to bring her single-ingredient mantra to the literary world with a memoir named for the three single ingredients of her life, Blood, Bones, and Butter.
While the single-ingredient formula is iconic, there are two notable exceptions.
Salt and Fat: Admit that sounds really, really good.
Joe Beef: It’s a restaurant name with such in-your-face masculinity that its inclusion of the namesake “Joe” before the single ingredient is forgiven. These are the dudes who welded their own smoker out back and invented the sausage-martini. Sexy Mother Foodies across the continent are planning their pilgrimages at this very moment.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Totally agree – love restaurants that do just a small list of things, really well. Some more names for your consideration: Sauce (lower east side), s’mac (owned by woman owner, short for Sarita’s Mac n Cheese), of course the Meatball Shop…