If you missed Part 1 of this two-part story, you can catch up here.
If you need something to talk about on your ROLi date, consider the dachshunds. You’ll find them printed on cocktail stirs and coasters and in objets d’art behind the bar. A photo of “three little sausage dogs” hangs in the bathroom. Angela Grogan is often spotted walking the trio, though, as with the restaurant, Roland Olah is their co-owner. Restaurants this posh do not usually have cartoon animal mascots, but the simply drawn dog in the fedora embodies the restaurant’s core playfulness. ROLi is a lot, but never quite too much. It’s like one of those French clowns, training for years to master what is still at heart “le jeu.” The game. The fun.
The main course presented a dilemma. For your sake, I felt I should order something representative of the menu rather than a special, but servers kept walking by with these puffy packets balanced on their trays. Wednesday is “Fish & Chipper” night, and in addition to another Platonic ideal, this time of a fish fry, that means the Spice Bag. This is in fact a literal bag of fried chicken and fry-cut potatoes, peppers and onions, tossed in a bag of spices (“Chinese Takeaway Meets Irish Chipper,” per the menu) and served with a gravy boat of curry sauce. “This is food you indulge in,” said Monroy of the Spice Bag. “That’s why we offer it once a week.” In the end, I did not order it, but sitting at the bar meant I could quiz people who did.
“Wow. Wow. Fantastic. Unbelievable,” said Ryan Robinson, who had just finished one with Madeline Rogers on what was clearly not a first date. These were Spice Bag connoisseurs (they’re also partial to Trinity’s version), who came to split the $28 dish and revel in the curry of it all. “It felt healthy somehow,” said Rogers. “Rejuvenating,” Robinson agreed.
Other once-a-week indulgences at ROLi can be sampled on Schnitzel Mondays, Hungarian Tuesdays and Frenchie Thursdays. The latter can feature a burger made out of honest-to-God confit duck ($30).
The seven-day seasonal menu is fish-forward, though there’s an impressive-looking steak, which can be ordered for two, plus a burger (Sunday through Thursday only), pork chops, chicken and a vegetarian pasta (house-made ravioli on the day I visited). My friend and I shared the Branzino, two beautiful fillets with skin as thin and crisp as a potato chip stacked atop a bed of corn and pepper salad, all of it nestled in a golden corn puree ($34). My dining companion avoids gluten, which was not at all difficult to do on this menu, although it did mean missing the Langos, a Hungarian fried dough piled with Asiago cheese ($15). A couple at the table behind us were feeding this to each other with minimal decorum but much delight. Next time, Langos. Next time.
Cocktails, round two: From the “Throwback Gin Classics” menu, we sampled a Twentieth Century, which was like a grown-up Lemon Drop, demurely yellow in its coupe glass. The Golden Mist (clarified milk punch, infused bergamot vodka, bitter Bianco, lemon, Italicus rosolio, apricot, simple syrup) in a rocks glass needed a minute for all those flavors to meld, with the assistance of a little melt from its giant cube of Japanese-imported ice.
Liquid dessert was the Manhattan-adjacent Tenth Square (rye, Atamán vermouth, angostura, barrel-aged vanilla bitters, lemon peel), which Monroy kindly split into two mini-coupes. (This is a bar stocked with every possible kind of glassware.) While many cocktails on the menu require shaking, the Tenth Square is premixed and kept in the freezer, rendering the temperature cold and the texture lush.
Also cold and lush was the highly photogenic Baked Alaska ($14). Beneath the D-cup dome of meringue, a cake base meets tiered ice creams, which vary seasonally; ours combined a sweet-tart raspberry with a dreamy basil. If mammiform desserts are too awkward on your date, go with a nice flat Crème Brûlée ($14). The lavender and Hungarian honey custard was perfectly filigreed for a shatter so satisfying it could provoke a dessert-spoon duel.
Luckily, the mood by this point in the evening was definitively lover-not-fighter. A server hurried by with birthday candles in a sticky toffee pudding. All jokes told were funny and all manner of glasses clinked. On the far side of the bar, a certain baseball cap had been turned completely backward, the better to lean in for a kiss.
