THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Violet

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Violet Restaurant Review:

About the restaurant & décor: From the team behind Emily and Emmy Squared comes Violet, chef Matt Hyland’s restaurant in the East Village. The space itself is a shoebox sized nook on Fifth Street, packed with a long marble bar and tables tucked into a single wood booth. There’s also a four-seat chef’s table.

Likes: Bone marrow; pizza; malasadas.
Dislikes: Gets packed; music is loud.

Food & Drinks: The grilled pizza of Providence, Rhode Island’s influential Al Forno is the inspiration for Violet. The pizza dough, naturally leavened with a sourdough starter, gets drizzled with olive oil and cooked for a flash on a gas and charcoal hybrid grill. It’s thin, tender and blistered, but still very much bread, not cracker. It is finished with nontraditional but elevated and unique toppings --- the Dune Duck features clams, hoisin and duck prosciutto, and the Aquidneck is topped with whole crispy anchovies, Sichuan oil and scallions --- and served with scissors for cutting. The non-pizza dishes are taken seriously, too. Extravagant bone marrow is served with trout roe and grilled pizza dough, and pork and duck tortellini with dashi brodo straddles the line between rich and delicate. The Portuguese doughnuts, malasadas, are ethereally light. Note that the menu is seasonal. Pair the food with a Princess Bay cocktail, a mix of violet flower-infused vodka, Prosecco, lemon and sugar, or one of the European-centric, reasonably priced bottles of wine from the short but thoughtful list.