A new restaurant in Long Island City is serving up New American cuisine with ingredients sourced from farms along the East Coast.
Bellwether, which opened on April 3 at 47-25 Vernon Blvd., is a 60-seat restaurant headed by Chef and Co-Partner Preston Madson, who grew up in Georgia and has worked in restaurants throughout New York City and around the country.
The menu includes items “with inflections of Mediterranean, North African and Asian cuisine,” according to a press release. Snacks include the Parker House Rolls with naturally leavened bread, sea salt and goats butter milk and grilled fava beans with black salt, chives and lemon.
Entrees include the Half Goffle Road Cornish Hen with arugula, mixed radish, charred lemon and chermoula. The poultry is sourced from Goffle Road Poultry Farms in New Jersey. The braised lamb neck for two includes butter bean hummus, spicy house pickles and pistachio flatbread.
Fish options include a seared black bass with asparagus, Tropea onions, parsley, roasted pepper and Meyer lemon (a hybrid citrus fruit native to China), black bass crudo with serrano peppers and celery and a seared octopus with sea island red peas, potatoes and salsa verde.
The seafood is purchased from Greenpoint Fish & Lobster in Brooklyn while the produce comes from Natoora, Keepsake Farm and Foraged and Found Edibles. Owner Matthew McCormick’s family farm in Ohio provides the restaurant with its honey.
Head bartender Diego Guzman Fernandez creates the cocktails and updates the wine list to complement the seasonal menu. Specialty cocktails include Bellwether Bees, a Barr Hill gin, honey, vanilla bean and lemon and Rhumance with Matusalem rum, cucumber, lime and Prosecco.
Bellwether is open from Tuesday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and on Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m. It will also be open for brunch in the future.
