In NYC, restaurants pops up and disappear as quickly as you can find one. It is sad to see a restaurant closes, but then, it can give a new restaurant a chance (and a retail space) to open. This is one of those stories. Here in Washington Heights, right by beautiful view of Hudson River, a new restaurant opened up after closing of another restaurant.

They opened around the beginning of this year, so they are still fresh. The inside is a bit small, with very simple decor. Nice exposed brick wall on one side, and earthy tone color wall on the other. Not much lighting fixtures, but with large windows covering the entrance side of the wall, it gets a lot of natural lights. Well, until the Sun goes down.

There were lots of old, antique looking photos on the brick wall, which was really cool and interesting. On the table, they had succulent plant instead of flowers, which was very unique. And yes, it was real plant!

It seems like they enjoy having real plants and flowers around, but all monochromatic colors. There were some by the bar, around the corner, and inside bathroom. They did it without them screaming out with loud colors, but very elegant and lovely.

It was still early when we got there, so they had some empty tables, so we got seated right away. Then the complimentary bread, which were nice and soft, moist and tasty. The butter was a bit too hard, I wish if they didn’t keep them in a refrigerator…

For the main, we ordered Flounder Poached in a Dill Beurre Blanc ($16), which is served with rice & maple roasted carrots sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. The portion was pretty small on this one also, it was good thing that we were not super hungry, otherwise, it would not have been enough… The fish was tender and flaky. The rice was nice too. It was a good dish, not great, and left me a bit unsatisfied, both in portion and flavor.

Another dish we ordered was Orzo with Cremini Mushrooms ($14), comes with Sauteed Buttery Sage, Parmesan & Cream. This one had more volume, and tasted great. The orzo was cooked perfectly, nice amount of seasoning, creamy with great flavor of Parmesan. It still was not a good, big portion, but was more filling than the flounder.

Even though we came here not totally super hungry, but the food portion was so small, we decided to share a dessert. We chose Nuage de Chocolate ($7), a “fluffy and rich chocolate cake with a soft molten core, served with vanilla gelato.” This one also came in the small, onion soup crock bowl. It was again, a bit too small for sharing, but it was good dessert. Nothing spectacular though.

The service was ok, it was better at first, then got very slow. The dinner took a little longer time than expected because of that, but we were not in a hurry, so that was ok. The food was good, but the small portion for the price tag is a bit high for me. I might go back for something else, but it will be when I am not super hungry.

The Pandering Pig – 209 Pinehurst Ave, New York, NY 10033