Now that fast-casual restaurants have so efficiently tentacled their way into New York’s collective eating habits, bowls have become the chosen canvas for chefs and venture capitalists alike.
In central Harlem, a new bowl has emerged at the hands of the chef JJ Johnson, who made his name in this same neighborhood, at the Cecil and Minton’s. (His Afrocentric restaurant Henry at Life Hotel, which received one star from the Times critic Pete Wells, closed in July.)
At FieldTrip, a mission statement beams at diners from a D.I.Y. world map that hangs on the exposed-brick wall: “Rice Is Culture.” The map also marks the origin of each variety of rice served here.
Mr. Johnson traces his obsession with rice to six years ago, when he bonded with the Anson Mills founder Glenn Roberts over a quest for the elusive heirloom African glaberrima rice. Mr. Johnson soon turned his search for rice into a pet project. “I started to fall in love with rice around the world, because it was always at the center of the table,” he said. “But in the U.S., rice is really disrespected — it’s mushy, or it’s undercooked.”
FieldTrip, then, is a course correction. The restaurant serves five varieties of rice; three come directly from farmers, and all meet Mr. Johnson’s strict criteria: no enrichment, no bleaching, no GMOs and freshly milled when possible. Finding them was a slog, but now, he said, he has a new farmer every month messaging him about a crop, hoping he’ll buy some.
Mr. Johnson steams each type of rice in unsalted water, and seasons it after the fact, because he believes it yields a better, less mushy product. So his China black rice, which gleams like thin beads of onyx, is tender at first bite and firm at its heart.
That black rice carries one of FieldTrip’s most astonishing achievements, a fast-casual holy grail: perfectly cooked fish. Mr. Johnson steams his salmon with lime leaves, and keeps each cooked portion in a lidded deli container to retain the moisture. Atop pineapple-fried black rice, the velvety flesh yields to the slightest pressure from a spork.
With each bowl, Mr. Johnson focuses his roving eye on a new cuisine or three. The vegetable bowl marries the traditions of biryani and joloff: basmati rice from India gets the treatment of a Ghanaian-style joloff, which is lighter in color and less fiery than its Nigerian counterparts. Nestled above it are roasted broccoli and the restaurant’s seasonal vegetable of choice — currently collards and brussels sprouts, always the right level of tender-crisp but occasionally oversalted — and a cooling smear of coconut yogurt.
Hiding beneath it all is Mr. Johnson’s Nana bread, a lavishly layered flatbread. “My great-aunt made a form of flatbread — paratha — so that’s what it’s celebrating,” Mr. Johnson said.
A different sort of celebration comes in his chicken bowl, where buttery (but not buttered) Carolina Gold rice supports a cluster of fried chicken nuggets dressed with a vinegary, brown-sugar-based barbecue sauce. Mr. Johnson has conceded to his public’s demand for chicken breast: He marinates irregularly shaped pieces of brined breast and gives them a second fry à la minute, which adds an extra layer of golden-fried lace. They taste almost exactly like the Chick-fil-A nuggets I worshiped at college in North Carolina.
FieldTrip’s most thrilling innovation has nothing to do with rice. The crab pockets, which arrive huddled in a little wax paper bag, taste like someone deep-fried a generous spoonful of crab bisque. These are Mr. Johnson’s take on crab Rangoon, with a filling of blue crab, herbed cream cheese and a second mystery “soft cheese” he’s keeping to himself. The won ton wrapper is dusted in cornmeal before it’s deep-fried, giving the skin a shaggy, crunchy edge. The snack feels like a brand-new comfort food you didn’t know you needed.
The restaurant’s balance of comfort and nutrition marks a path forward for modern fast-casual restaurants. And as more fine dining-trained chefs and operators enter the fray, the genre’s potential inches higher.
FieldTrip isn’t a destination restaurant, and isn’t necessarily trying to be. Mr. Johnson has been clear that he wanted to provide something that wasn’t in the neighborhood. It’s worth noting that the biggest two fast-casual chains in the city, Sweetgreen and Dig (nee Dig Inn), haven’t made it to central Harlem.
“For me, it was about bringing back a counter restaurant in Harlem,” Mr. Johnson said. He cites M & G Diner, a classic Harlem soul food restaurant that shuttered in 2008, as an inspiration; a photo of the place hangs on the wall here.
