Goodbye to The Marrow

Back in January 2013, we went to The Marrow, Chef Harold Dieterle's new German-Italian restaurant that had opened about a month earlier. We've always been big fans of Chef Dieterle and love Perilla and Kin Shop, so it was a no-brainer that we would head over to The Marrow that winter (for our dating anniversary, actually). Earlier today, we read on Eater the sad news that, for economic reasons, The Marrow was closing up shop tomorrow night. Since we never got around to posting about The Marrow back then, we figured now was a good time for a nostalgic look back at our visit.

The Marrow had a menu of German and Italian inspired dishes, based on the two sides of the chef's family.  The menu was split up into meat plates (appetizer sized), starters, mains and sides. Since we like both German and Italian cuisine, we tried to get a mix of both sides of the menu for our dinner.

We love German Rieslings, and A especially loves Riesling Spätlese, so we were happy with the selections on the wine list.  We decided to go with the Meulenhof 2011, and it was wonderful.  It had a nice sweetness to go with hints of summer and fall fruit.

The first food to arrive was the bread in the form of a pretzel roll.  The bread was really good.  The outside of the roll was a little harder than M thought it would be. She had been picturing one of those soft pretzel rolls with the same texture as a warm, soft, buttery pretzel (like these).

For dipping, they gave us olive oil and stoneground mustard.  The olive oil wasn't really necessary, but the mustard was a great match for the pretzel roll.

We got a bunch of starters and meat plates, together with one main course, to split.  One was the garganelli with tuna, puttanesca, olives, capers, and bread crumbs (one of the night's specials, if we remember correctly). It had both tuna marrow and tuna belly. We were mostly attracted to this because we had no idea what tuna marrow was or what it would taste like. Overall it was good, but the flavor was more olives than tuna. The sauce and the homemade pasta were both quite nice.

We also got the duck liverwurst with cornichons, green mustard, and grilled bread. We're both big fans of liverwurst on sandwiches, so we just had to try this. The liverwurst itself was very good, probably the best part of the plate. We had thought the grilled bread would be grilled with olive oil (like bread we had in Greece and other places) but it was more plain. The cornichons were fresh and crisp, and the green mustard had an unexpected sweet and tart flavor, like a green apple. Overall, we liked this dish.

Next was the skillet-braised cuttlefish with garlic bread, guanciale, and white wine. The broth, which had bacon and a nice garlicky flavor, was a little on the salty side. The cuttlefish head was good though, very tender. We don't really remember as much about this dish as we do about the liverwurst though (good thing we have some limited notes from that night).

There were two dishes that we knew for sure we were going to get at dinner since they were the two that everyone was always talking about in their reviews of the place. One was the bone marrow, which came with sea urchin, fried potatoes, meyer lemon aioli, and baby celery greens (which reminded us of watercress). The grilled bread was just like the one that came with the liverwurst, but it worked well here because it was just the vehicle for the very flavorful bone marrow and uni. This was a very tasty and well-balanced dish. The uni was not that briny and didn't taste as much like sea water as it sometimes does, and the marrow wasn't as gloppy as it could be, so the two textures worked well together here. We liked this.

We only got one main dish and it was the one that everyone talked about - the pan-fried duck schnitzel with quark spaetzle, hazelnuts, cucumber-potato salad and stewed wolfberries. What was really nice was that they knew we were sharing, so they automatically brought it out to us on two separate plates without us even asking for it. We would have been perfectly happy just picking off of one plate, but that was a really nice service touch.

There was a reason the duck schnitzel was the most famous dish to come out of The Marrow. The whole dish was excellent. Although M isn't usually a huge fan of the texture of duck, she thought it was perfect for schnitzel here. The amount of the frying was just right, and the various salads and sides that accompanied the schnitzel were good complements. After all this time, we don't quite remember which was our favorite, but all together, it was a really good dish.

We also got grilled baby romaine lettuce with pecorino and a warm lemon-anchovy vinaigrette for a side dish, since we felt like our other choices were severely lacking in vegetable matter. Although grilled romaine often tastes really good and this was no exception, we probably didn't need to get this. It was overshadowed by how good the other dishes were, in our opinion.

As we were celebrating our dating anniversary, we had to indulge in some dessert. One dessert that we got were the Berliners which had Goldschläger cream and malted chocolate. We didn't take any notes about dessert so we don't remember exactly what we thought, but we think these were good. But donuts are often good.

Over a year later, we have no memory of what these are, but we got them. Streusel cookies? No idea. Sorry.

Overall, we had a very satisfying meal at The Marrow, especially the duck schnitzel. But given the choice, we would go back to Perilla or Kin Shop before The Marrow, and for that reason, it doesn't really surprise us that this is the one that's closing up. It's sad because it was an ambitious concept that was executed fairly well in our opinion and we can only imagine that, as a place reflecting the chef's heritage, it's especially hard to let go of something that's so representative of you and your family. We're glad that we were able to have dinner there once, and we're looking forward to even more of Chef Dieterle's food on future visits to Perilla and Kin Shop.