MICHELIN Guide’s Point Of View

If you’ve ever had Brooklyn envy, buckle your seatbelt. Tucked among rows of brownstones straight off the set of a movie, The Finch’s charming location pulls at your heartstrings long before Chef Gabe McMackin’s outrageously good food warms your soul. Duck behind the bright blue façade, and things get even better: a warm staff welcomes you to a charming, rustic décor replete with wood-beamed ceilings and farmhouse chairs. At the heart of this expansive space, which sprawls out into a series of cozy nooks, is an open kitchen where the chef extraordinaire guides his team to excellence before an audience of diners seated at a Carrara marble counter. Modern yet comforting, McMackin's dishes mix skill and personality. The food is well-executed, satisfying and carefully sourced-from tender shishito peppers, blistered to perfection, with a squirt of lemon and crunchy sea salt, to shaved lamb tongue with fennel, green olives, orange and chili. Tender green leaves of Swiss chard are pressed between thin sheets of pasta, topped with pine nuts and baked with a savory parmesan breadcrumb crust in what may be the most delicious, soul-satisfying, impossible-not-to-finish vegetable lasagna ever.