The Hollow Bar + Kitchen

This past week was Restaurant Week in Downtown Albany.  For those not from the area, or the blissfully unaware within the area, this is a week that restaurants advertise a three course meal for a low low price of $20.13.  As first-timers, we were afraid restaurants would cheap out on menu items and portion sizes. 

I feel like I've been the negative nellie on this blog, which is hopefully not a reflection of my real life attitude.  I do tend to be the one to write when we have a bad experience, for whatever reason.  Today, however, I want to tell everyone about a fantastic experience we had at The Hollow Bar + Kitchen in Downtown Albany.

The Hollow.  Though it failed to live up to its name in that we saw no headless horsemen--this is more disappointing to me than you'd think--the food, service, and hospitality managed to overcome this deficit.  Walking in the interior is fairly nondescript, with simple brick walls and white linen tablecloths.  The lighting is a little low, though I didn't have an issue reading anything (possibly because we sat near the window), and the music and atmosphere generally comes across as rock-indyish to me, but I may just be a cultural gorilla.

Beer list is pretty great. They have an expansive and varied selection of drafts and bottles including a Davidson Bros. Oatmeal Stout made specially for them.  Signature cocktails (as R calls them, my girly drinks) also looked intriguing, but I did not indulge.  I did order a flight of beers, including the Hollow Stout.  It was remarkably smooth for a New York brewed stout, it reminded me more of Guinness than anything else, super rich and slightly chocolaty and without a ton of hopping and over-roasting that makes most American stouts so hard to drink.

The appetizers were an arugula salad for R and a white bean and tarragon soup for me.  The salad had great flavor, plenty of saltiness from ribbons of asiago and peppery bite from the arugula, though it lacked some acidity (and was a little oily but it was truffle oil). There were grilled shitake mushrooms in the salad too, but I left that all to R as the non-fungus eater in the family. The soup was about as good as white bean soup can be, which is to say filling and not very exciting. 

For the main course, I ordered the house pesto grilled steak and R had squash gnocchi.  The steak nailed it flavor wise and was cooked pretty much perfectly, though the trimming could have been better as it was tough and served with a bit too much fat and gristle for a restaurant steak.  Come to find out, chef butchers the meat himself and we were impressed by that fact. The vegetables were really well-seasoned and cooked, and the perfect complement to the meat. A highlight of the dish was the nut-free house made pesto made with carrots! We didn't even miss the pine nuts.


R's gnocchi, on the other hand, were pretty much flawless. The combination of orange squash gnocchi and white potato gnocchi lived up to its autumn description. It was a rare example of an adventurous and creative dish executed almost perfectly. R was afraid the maple brown butter would be too much but it was just sweet enough, but not overpowering.  The ricotta salata brought a savory element to the dish, but didn't choke out all the nuance and the crunch from toasted pecans gave just enough textural contrast. The chef just nailed it with this dish, and I'm pretty sure I sampled as much of it as she ended up eating.  Looking back, I feel a little bad, but not really.

Our dessert options were peach sorbet or apple cider donut bread pudding.  Is that even an option?  Even though we felt the weight of duty to make sure we provided a thorough review of every possible menu item, who the hell is getting sorbet over an apple cider donut bread pudding?  Unfortunately the dessert, while solid, did not live up to the awesome promise of its name.  It just seemed to have a little too much bread and not enough custard pudding.  Again it was pretty good, but if you're giving me something named apple cider donut bread pudding it better knock my socks off.  This did unfortunately fall a bit short. We really wanted to like it.  Apple cider donuts should just be left alone. That said, the dessert was saved and elevated by the drizzle of honey.  My god...the chef later told us it was locally harvested wild honey that he got from his dad, and it really came through. It just had such a unique flavor that is hard to describe; there was just something  about the honey that made you go hmmm.  We'd be happy to have a bucketful of just the honey for dessert. We've been raving about it every since.

Oh yeah, the chef talked to us. Did I mention? What elevated this night for us from very good to great was when the head chef came out to not only ask how our meals were but actually request criticism so that he knew where to improve.  That kind of humble, intellectual integrity is lacking in so many chefs and people in general, and it has convinced me that The Hollow Bar + Kitchen will succeed.  I let him know about the steak being a bit tough and poorly trimmed (but also how satisfied we were, I'm not that mean), and asked for the story behind the honey.

Overall, our service was attentive, professional, and clearly very well-trained.  The atmosphere was a little dark but comfortable to me.  Food was very good, and I believe will only get better in the future.  Portions, for the price, were very impressive and seemed to use very high quality, fresh ingredients. The whole experience was fantastic and I strongly urge anyone and everyone to visit The Hollow at all hours, day or night.  Just stand outside and bask in it if they aren't open. R even went back the next day for lunch without me, it's that good.