The Mark by Jean Georges

Among four-star chefs, none has syndicated himself more broadly than Jean-Georges Vongerichten. His flagship, the eponymous Jean Georges, remains one of the sublime dining experiences in the city. There are at least fifteen more restaurants (in multiple cities) that he owns directly, and many others—various Vongs and Spice Markets—where he pockets a consulting fee without managing the property.

The rap against these places is that they seldom command his attention after they’ve opened and the (usually) rave reviews have rolled in. This spring brings two new Vongerichten restaurants to New York, raising the city’s total (by my count) to nine. Even for him, it’s an ambitious agenda.

The Mark by Jean Georges is a fancy place in an even fancier Upper East Side hotel, but the menu is surprisingly low-brow, with its $22 hamburgers and pizzas in the teens. There’s the obligatory $89 ribeye for two, but most of the entrées are below $30, and very few of them set the pulse racing. The servers marching through the dining room with their silver platters are incongruous with the lack of ambition on the plate.

The fit-out is gorgeous. On a recent Saturday evening, the Mark was a mixture of the old-school Upper East Side crowd, European and Russian accents, and fashion-plate trophy dates in party dresses. Many of the women could be illustrations in a costmetic surgery textbook, illustrating both the right and the wrong way of doing it.

The restaurant, at least early on, is not lacking for business. We couldn’t do any better than 9:30 p.m., even a month in advance. We arrived early for drinks, only to find a cocktail menu as uninspired as the food. However, it was worthwhile for the people-watching alone.

I’ve never seen so many rent-a-dates. One seated near us had been promoted to concubine. “Can I rent an apartment under $10,000?” Her apparently stoned companion, who was at least twice her age, didn’t have an intelligible answer. Later on, she pouted, “I’ve been waiting patiently for a week!”

What about the food? Oh yes, they do serve food here. Some of it is good. A small black truffle fritter was served as an amuse-bouche.

A black truffle pizza with fontina cheese ($16; right) continued the theme. We shared it, and that’s the way to go. Although it is excellent, even truffles can be cloying if you eat too much of them. But I can’t complain about the price. At $16, this wouldn’t have been a bad deal even without truffles.

The entrées were standard-issue hotel fare: a pedestrian linguine with clams ($30; left); an overly salty parmesan crusted chicken ($23; right).

The wine list has decent selections that don’t break the bank. I chose a $43 Syrah. Rather oddly, the sommelier brought a $65 bottle, which he opened before showing it to us. As it was quite clearly not what I had ordered—not even close, actually—the restaurant had to eat it, which was done without complaint.

There is, of course, much more to the menu than what we tried, but we were left with the impression of decent hotel food served in a gorgeous room where the people-watching trumps the cuisine. Perhaps Vongerichten is skipping the inevitable decline, and launching with mediocrity in mind from the beginning.

The Mark by Jean-Georges (25 E. 77th St. near Madison Ave., Upper East Side)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: **
Overall: *

Bistro Vendôme

Bistro Vendôme opened in early February in the former March space, which had been vacant for nearly three years, after its replacement, Nish, quickly flopped in early 2007. The chef here is Pascal Petiteau, who worked at the nearby Jubilee and finally has his own place.

I remember March only vaguely, as my lone visit was nearly six years ago, and I never made it to Nish. The décor now is bare bones, but the space seems much brighter than it used to be, relying on natural light flooding through wide windows on three levels. There will be outdoor terrace dining in good weather.

There is a long, spacious bar at the front of the townhouse that Bistro Vendôme occupies, which I am fairly certain wasn’t there in the March days. The host stand is past the bar, and this leads to mild confusion, as customers coming in are a bit unsure, at first, about where to congregate. The restaurant was packed on a Saturday evening—always a good sign for a place mainly dependent on neighborhood business—but the host was a bit overwhelmed, and we were not seated until half-an-hour past our 8:00 p.m. reservation. A cocktail at ordered at the bar tasted mostly of tonic water. Service at the table, however, was just fine.

The menu offers classic, inexpensive French bistro food, straight up and without complication or distraction. It is all done well, but not beyond the better classic French places that many NYC neighborhoods have. (Disclosure: We had the pleasure of dining here during “Friends & Family,” courtesy of a publicist’s invitation, but our review is of the meal we paid for.)

We wondered about how many bushels of green salad the restaurant consumes per day, given its prominence in two fine appetizers: a Crispy Goat Cheese Cake ($10; above left) and an off-menu special, Crispy Sweetbreads ($10; above right).

Ribeye steak with sauce au poivre ($30; above left) was fine for a non-steakhouse preparation, and the fries were perfect. We’re a bit past Cassoulet season, but I had a hankering for it anyway ($24; above right), and the chef nailed it. Duck confit, bacon, and garlic sausage were on target, and so were the beans.

For a restaurant this inexpensive, I would like the wine list to have a few more choices below $50; a 2005 Guigal Crozes Hermitage was $54, and there weren’t many French reds below that level.

The packed house seemed to be mostly an older, Upper East Side crowd. As far as we are concerned, there can never be enough good French restaurants. Sutton Place agrees with us, if last Saturday’s crowd was any indication.

Bistro Vendôme (405 East 58th Street, just east of First Avenue, Sutton Place)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *

SHO Shaun Hergatt

Note: Shaun Hergatt left the eponymous restaurant at the end of July 2012. As of August 2012, the space was called The Exchange, with an inexpensive menu by new chef Josh Capone. That restaurant closed in April 2013. As of October 2014, it is Reserve Cut, a kosher steakhouse.

*

We paid a return visit to SHO Shaun Hergatt recently. Our previous visit was probably one of our two or three best meals of 2009.

The mainstream critics practically ignored SHO—including no full review in The New York Times. Despite that egregious error, business has picked up. We found it full on a Saturday evening, in contrast to our last visit, when it was practically empty.

The base price remains $69 prix fixe for three courses at dinner (à la carte at lunch), plus a flurry of canapés, amuses-bouches, petits-fours, and so forth. It is probably the best high-end restaurant deal in the city. The obligatory tasting menus have appeared: $110 for six courses or $220 for fifteen.

We ordered the six-course tasting. Our enthusiasm for the restaurant is undimmed, and as this is our second review of SHO, we’ll keep our comments brief.

We started with a trio of canapés (above left), of which we failed to get an intelligable explanation. Then, as amuse-bouche, a Kumamoto oyster with crème fraiche (above right).

The first savory course was a superb Venison Tartare (above left) with perigord truffle. We also loved a Maitake Mushroom Soup (above right) with black trumpet pavé and celeriac foam.

The kitchen sentout an extra course (above left): a soft poached quail egg with langoustine, black truffle, and cauliflower purée. This was terrific, but I must admit we couldn’t taste the langoustine, if it was there at all.

Wild Striped Bass (above right) was impeccably prepared.

We had two preparations of lobster (above left; the photo was after I’d already taken a few bites). Although the lobster itself was beautifully done, I didn’t think creamy polenta added much to the dish.

We also had two preparations of veal tenderloin (above right). The preparation with sweetbread ravioli (pictured) was much better than the one with veal tongue.

As pre-dessert (not pictured), we had a vanilla crème with orange butter, citrus segments, and chocolate. Dessert (also not pictured) was a chocolate soufflé, candied kumquats, and ice cream. This was followed by more petits-fours (left) than we could possibly eat.

Service was first-rate. The staff recognized us, but as far as we could tell, everyone got the same treatment.

The patrons filling SHO on a Saturday evening are clearly not a neighborhood crowd. Despite the lack of media adoration, the word has gotten out.

Many people thought it was a fool’s errand to open a place like SHO in the current economy, and particularly in the battered Financial District, in a building covered in scaffolding, on a street closed to traffic. Of course, most of the planning was done in the boom times, and there is little they could have done to change it—even assuming they wanted to. Luckily for us, they stuck to their guns, and opened the best new restaurant of 2009.

SHO Shaun Hergatt (40 Broad Street near Exchange Place, Financial District)

Food: ***½
Service: ***½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***½

La Mangeoire

Note: This is a review under chef Christian Delouvrier, who retired at the end of 2014. He spent four years at La Mangeoire, but was not able to attract the city’s main restaurant critics to review it.

*

What a strange, strange trip it’s been for Christian Delouvrier. In the 1980s and ’90s, he was arguably the city’s most successful French chef, winning three stars at Maurice (1981–89), three at Les Celebrites (1991–98), and four at Lespinasse (1998–2003), where he replaced the legendary Gray Kunz.

When Lespinasse shuttered (one of the few restaurants ever to close with four stars), Delouvrier was temporarily sidelined until he took over as executive chef for Alain Ducasse at the Essex House (which ironically occupied the old Les Celebrites space) in 2004. Ducasse canned him within days after Frank Bruni demoted the restaurant to three stars the following year.

Things haven’t quite been the same for Delouvrier since then. He cooked at La Goulue in Boca Raton and Bal Harbour from 2006–09, with a couple of consulting gigs on the side. Last year, David Bouley hired Delouvrier to rescue his failing brasserie, Secession. We found the restaurant much improved, but the disastrous pre-Delouvrier reviews were too much to overcome, and Secession promptly closed.

Bouley offered Delouvrier a job at one of his other properties, but you sensed that wasn’t going to work out. Without much fanfare, he turned up last October at La Mangeoire, a neighborhood Provençal bistro on the Upper East Side that, as far as I can tell, has never had a Times review despite decades in business. “With this job I have returned to my roots,” he told the Times in December, when the news finally leaked out.

Our immediate reaction: “This is what Secession should have been.” The restaurant’s three small rooms immediately convey the feeling of a village restaurant in Provence. There are lush flower bouquets, hanging copper pots, French artwork on the walls, starched white tablecloths, wine racks in plain view, and a friendly maitre d’ who happily seated me, even though I was 20 minutes early.

La Mangeoire is not going out of its way to publicize its new chef. His name does not appear on the website or on the printed menu. You have to figure that for a guy who once had four stars, this is a come-down, and perhaps he still has his eye on something bigger. Or perhaps Delouvrier, now in his early 60s, simply wants to relax, and to cook the food of his youth.

The menu, which does not appear to be reprinted frequently, consists entirely of French standards. The appetizers ($10.00–13.50) number about a dozen; so do the entrées, each of which is offered in portions small ($13.50–22.00) or large ($19.50–33.00). The prix fixe is $28.

There was a long list of recited specials. One of these, an appetizer of scalloped potatoes with onions and goat cheese ($12; right), sounded so good that we both ordered it, and were delighted with the choice.

I’ve never been a fan of Coq au Vin ($24.50; above left), but I thought it would be a good test of the kitchen: sure enough, this preparation felt exactly right. The chicken was as tender as it should be, the sauce tart but not overpowering. Blanquette de Veau ($28.00; above right) was another recited special. The sauce seemed exactly right, as well, the veal more tender than I recall in past versions of this dish.

The Provence-heavy wine list shows some real thought, but when you ask a server for wines by the glass, he merely says, “Merlot, Cabernet, Malbec, Pinot Noir,” as if it didn’t matter which Malbec, Cabernet, etc., you were getting. A couple of the by-the-glass selections turn out to be not even French, which undermines the whole purpose of dining at the restaurant. Once we got a look at the list, we were pleased with a 2002 Dom Bernarde from Provence, for $44.

I have no idea whether hiring a well known chef has brought in new business. The restaurant was full on a Friday evening. Some of the patrons were clearly from the neighborhood; others, we couldn’t tell. It certainly wasn’t a stereotype old-fashioned uptown crowd, but a healthy mix of old and young. The location is technically in Turtle Bay, but the feel of the restaurant is Upper East Side.

Heaven only knows whether Christian Delouvrier will stay put for a while, but we can only hope he does. For now, La Mangeoire is your go-to place for Provençal classics. [Update: Chef Delouvrier called us, and assured us that he intends to remain at La Mangeoire for many years.]

La Mangeoire (1008 Second Avenue at 53rd Street, Turtle Bay)

Food: **
Service: *½
Ambiance: **
Overall: **

The Café at Le Cirque

Like most luxury restaurants these days, Le Cirque has a formal dining room and a dressed-down café, where reservations aren’t taken and the menu is a bit more approachable.

Since our meal in the main dining room almost two years ago, Le Cirque has acquired a new chef: Craig Hopson, formerly of Picholine and One if By Land, Two if By Sea. None of the city’s major critics has reviewed Le Cirque since Hopson took over. It holds three Times stars, courtesy of a Bruni re-review in February 2008. It almost pained him to dine there:

At Le Cirque you will indeed eat too much food, of a kind that neither your physician nor your local Greenpeace representative would endorse, in a setting of deliberate pompousness, at a sometimes ludicrous expense.The ravioli, all three of them, are $35.

But that has long been the way of certain restaurants, which exist to be absurd, to speak not to our better angels but to our inner Trumps, making us feel pampered and reckless and even a little omnipotent, if only for two hours and three courses with a coda of petits fours.

And while I’m not calling for the spread of these establishments (or the massacre of Chilean sea bass), I’m charged with noting when one of them fulfills its chosen mission with classic panache. Le Cirque now does.

Has ever a critic awarded three stars to a restaurant, while saying that he would prefer to see no more like it?

I had an evening commitment on the Upper East Side during Restaurant Week, and as Le Cirque would be on the way, I decided to drop in. The Dining Room was fully committed, even at 5:45 p.m., but the adjoining café was empty (it would begin to fill up later on). The website advises: “Jackets are required for gentlemen in the dining room and suggested in the café.” I was wearing one, but it did not seem to matter.

The café is a comfortable space, dominated by a huge cylindrical wine tower. In the oddly-shaped room, two of the walls have ceiling-height windows that face on Third Avenue and 58th Street, admitting plenty of natural light.

Lately, the owners have been struggling to fill the café. Evidently, the idea of dropping into Le Cirque for an order of sliders hasn’t caught on. Offers to drop in for free fried chicken to watch major sporting events (sixth game of the World Series; Thursday night Jets–Bills game) have dropped in my mailbox with regularity.

There is a dizzying array of options at Le Cirque. The main carte offers a pre-theatre prix fixe at $48, a tasting menu at $120, and a regular prix fixe at $95. You can also order à la carte, which I don’t recall before, with some of the highest prices in town: appetizers $25–30 (most in the high 20s), pastas $28–38, mains $42–70.

The café menu, also called the wine bar menu, has tasting plates from $14–35, along with a three-course “restaurant week” prix fixe for $35, which was available all summer long. Apparently you can order from any of these menus in the café, but the server gave me only the restaurant week menu, as they said it’s what most of the café visitors want.

No one should be under the illusion that they’re getting a $98 value for $35. When the price for three courses is less than the cheapest dining room entrée, you’re obviously not going to get the restaurant’s best stuff. None of the three dishes I had is shown on the main dining room carte. But I did have a modestly satisfying meal at a respectable price, with two forgettable dishes and one I would happily order again.

Gnocchi with tripe ragu (above left) was pedestrian, but I loved (at the price) the pavé of veal with zucchini, tomato, and pecorino romano (above right). The veal was nicely crisped, but tender on the inside. I was afraid of another humdrum tomato broth, but both the tomato and the zucchini were vibrantly flavored. The cheese didn’t add much, though.

Dessert, a lemon merengue pie, was competently executed but rather ordinary, and the accompanying sorbet paired with it poorly.

Café diners get the same bread service as the main dining room—not that it is anything to write home about. Coffee ($4) came in its own silver pot. Service overall was attentive and pleasant. The café has its own pared-down wine list (though I’m sure you can get the bigger one), and prices by the glass are reasonable. A 2003 Haut Médoc was $15.

It may not offer the main dining room’s culinary fireworks, but the Café is a fine way to enjoy an inexpensive dinner if you happen to be in the area.

The Café at Le Cirque (151 E. 58th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Daniel

When Frank Bruni re-affirmed the four-star rating for Daniel earlier this year, his endorsement came with caveats not usually found in such a review: “it yields fewer transcendent moments than its four-star brethren and falls prey to more inconsistency,” and a clunker rate “slightly higher than a restaurant as ambitious as this one’s should be.”

I gave Daniel four stars in March 2007, but as I look back on that meal, I think it was the least satisfying of those to which I’ve given the highest rating. This must be taken in relative terms: obviously the food was very good. But four stars, meaning “extraordinary,” must be something more than that. When I looked back on that meal, and realized I couldn’t even vaguely recall very much of it, I realized that I must have overrated the place.

This feeling was cemented by a return visit last weekend. The décor has been brightened, the plush red velvet banished, but the food remains unexciting. I should clarify that our tastes are distinctly not biased against Chef Boulud because he has been cooking the same food for twenty years. We love the classics done well. Actually, there is nothing more exciting than breathing life into an old standard.

But among seven courses we had on a $185 tasting menu (click on image for a larger copy), there was not one I would especially care to have again. That’s not because there was anything wrong with them—to the contrary, I have great respect for the care with which most of them were put together. But all of that effort yielded curiously dull effects.

Part of me wished we had selected the $105 prix fixe. Several of the items offered there sounded a lot more interesting. On my next visit to Daniel—though I assure you, it probably won’t be anytime soon—we will probably go that route.

The bifurcated service at Daniel—one level for the anointed, another for everyone else—is the stuff of legend. We experienced none of this. We found all of the servers friendly, efficient, and highly professional.

But there were several inexplicably long waits, which struck us more as inattention than snobbery. We figured that by 10:15 p.m., the time of our reservation, the restaurant would be starting to thin out. To the contrary, we were kept waiting until 10:45.

While we cooled our jets in the bar, it seemed like forever until someone came to took our drinks order. The party next to us endured a similar wait, and they appeared to be known to Chef Boulud, who came over to say hello; they were later seated in a secluded nook designed (or so it appeared) for V.I.P.s.

We do understand that restaurants sometimes run behind for reasons beyond management’s control, but we think an explanation—or at least an apology—was in order, and under the circumstances our drinks should have been comped.

The one thing they did to help us bide our time, was to serve the amuses-bouches in the bar (photo right).

When we were seated, there was another fairly long wait before bread (many varieties of it—none warm) was served. Once our tasting menu was underway, service moved along at a good, but not hurried, pace. As it was, we were not out of there until 1:00 a.m., by which time only one other table was still seated.

The tasting menu format offers choices for every course, and we diverged on all but one of them, which allowed us to taste a good cross-section of the menu. (Most of the tasting menu items are also available on the prix fixe.)

First Course:

• Mosaic of Capon, Foie Gras, and Celery Root. Pickled Daikon, Satur Farms Mâche, Pear Confit (above left)
• Pressed Duck and Foie Gras Terrine. Chimay Gelée Chestnuts, Red Cabbage Chutney (above right)

These were both labor intensive dishes, and you had to respect the artistry involved. The Mosaic of Capon was the more satisfying of the two.

Second Course:

• Maine Peekytoe Crab Salad. Celery, Walnut Oil, Granny Smith Sauce (above left)
• Olive Oil Poached Cod “en Salade”. Artichoke Puré, Tarragon Dressing, Lemon Zest (above right)

The crab salad was the more successful of the two. The juxtaposition with apples struck us as especially clever. The poached cod salad didn’t have much flavor.

We both made the same choice for the third course: Handmade Spinach Tortelloni. Chanterelles, “Tomme de la Chataigneraie,”, Lomo, Black Garlic (left).

(The other choice for this course was a butter poached abalone with yellow curry braised greens, crispy rice, and chayote.)

Once again, we were impressed by the amount of labor that had gone into this dish, but the flavors were far too muted.

Fourth Course:

• Whole Grain Crusted Skate. Chanterelles, Swiss Chard, Caper Chicken Jus (above left)
• Loup de Mer with Syrah Sauce. Leek Royale, “Pommes Lyonnaise” (above right)

The blizzard of vegetables surrounding the skate was arguably more impressive than the skate itself. The Loup de Mer was somewhat unappetizing; on the plate, it resembled an eel.

Fifth Course:

• Elysian Fields Farm Lamb Chop. Garbanzo Bean Fricassé, Chorizo, Rutabaga, Chickpea Tendrils (above left)
• Duo of Dry Aged Black Angus Beef. Red Wine Braised Short Rib with Parsnip-Potato Gratin, Seared Rib Eye with Black Trumpets. Gorgonzola Cream (above right)

The lamb and the short rib, although correctly prepared, seemed pedestrian for a restaurant on this level—or should I say, purported level. The ribeye was tough, and had none of the marbling that it should.

Sixth Course:

• Citrus Biscuit with Pink Grapefruit. Buddha’s Hand Lemon Confit, Mandarin Sorbet (above left)
• Warm Guanaja Chocolate Coulant. Liquid Caramel, Fleur de Sel, Milk Sorbet (above middle)
• Birthday Cake (above right)

The citrus biscuit was the best of the three. The chocolate coulant was dry, and we didn’t bother finishing it. The birthday cake was better.

The meal finished with petits-fours (average) and the warm beignets (excellent) that, by this time of the evening, sadly went to waste.

While Daniel has the format of a four-star restaurant, with its high ratio of servers to customers, high-end servingware, labor-intensive preparation, sauces poured at tableside, and so forth, we found the food uninspired and dull. We hold nothing against Daniel for serving the same classics year after year. But they need to inspire more than just “respect” for the level of effort involved.

We respect Daniel, but we did not love it.

Daniel (60 E. 65th Street west of Park Avenue, Upper East Side)

Food: **½
Service: **½
Ambiance: ****
Overall: **½

The crab salad was the more successful of the two. The juxtaposition with apples struck us as especially clever. The poached cod salad didn’t have much flavor.

Le Relais de Venise

Le Relais de Venise “L’Entrecôte” garnered a bit of press—only a little—when it opened last summer in East Midtown— oddly enough, on the same block as the Four Seasons. The few reviews it got told of a “meh” steak in a “meh” sauce, and that was that.

Then Sam Sifton shocked us all by choosing the place for his fourth review, pronouncing it “terrific,” and awarding one star.

The concept at L’Entrecôte is simple enough. There is only one order: salad and steak frites for $24. Across the street, at the Four Seasons, you can’t even get an appetizer for that.

Desserts are extra, but not exorbitant, at around $5–7 each. A glass of the house Bordeaux is just $5.75. None of that is expensive by Manhattan standards, where at most top steakhouses the steak alone is around $40—more at some places.

Still, even if you skip dessert (as I did) and drink just one glass of the wine, you’ll approach $40 with tax and tip. There are plenty of cheap eats at that price, and when only one item is served, it ought to be great. It is not.

What’s served here is better called “nourishment” than cuisine. As Sifton noted, you could be out in twenty minutes, and there is no reason to linger any longer. The space is cavernous, and neither warm nor especially inviting. I wonder how often they’ll fill it?

Despite all that space, there is no coat check.

The menu announces, “Today, trimmed Entrecôte Steak [i.e. rib steak] ‘Porte Maillo’ with its famous sauce, French fries and Green salad with walnuts.” I love that word Today, as if you could get something different tomorrow. You can’t.

A waitress dressed in a French maid’s uniform asks if you’ll have your steak blue, rare, medium, or well. I choose rare, and she writes a big “R” in magic marker on the white mat that covers the table. With so little to keep track of, do they really need an aide memoire?

That house wine arrives. It is certainly not over-priced, at $5.75. But one glass of it will be enough.

The salad (below left) comes within minutes— fast enough to make me suspect a bunch of them are made up in advance. After a few bites of the soggy lettuce, my fears are confirmed.

In contrast, the steak seems to be prepared to order. The waitress serves about half of it onto your plate, and ladles on the sauce. The other half is left on a warming tray at a serving station nearby. When you’ve finished your first helping, she’ll bring over the tray and serve the rest. It’s a gimmick, as the portion is not so large that it would get cold if it were all served at once.

The meat, as you’d expect, is not the best, but it is certainly edible, and cooked correctly to the rare I had asked for. The fries are decent. The sauce is a secret, but the consensus is that it includes chicken livers, mustard, and pepper. I thought I tasted mushrooms, too. It is good enough to conceal the fact that the beef is nothing special.

The servers are plenty attentive. You could argue that the place is over-staffed, given how little is expected of them. The restaurant fulfills its modest aims acceptably, but I’m sure you can find more interesting ways to spend $40.

Le Relais de Venise (590 Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street, East Midtown)

Food: Acceptable
Service: Decent
Ambiance: Acceptable
Overall: Satisfactory

Bouley

I am late to the party with this review, in that the new Bouley opened almost a year ago, and our meal there was over a week ago. Recollections of specific dishes have faded a bit, but my feelings about the restaurant itself are perfectly clear.

Bouley restaurant is now in its third and most elegant location. It started out in the space that is now the Italian restaurant Scalini Fedeli, then moved to the space that is now Bouley Bakery. In late 2008, Bouley finally got the palatial dining room that the chef had always wanted. Louis Quatorze could be happy here. It is expensive and stunning.

The restaurant does not want for business. Every table was occupied on a Saturday evening in early September, and at 10:30 p.m. there were still new parties being seated. David Bouley has one of the top fine-dining brand names in New York. He is recession-proof.

The various Bouleys have yo-yo’d between three and four New York Times stars, most recently three, courtesy of Frank Bruni. Even he, never one to be wowed by elegance, acknowledged the over-the-top sense of privilege that one gets by dining here. Words can’t describe it.

But there is unevenness in the food and service, which is the one defect a change of venue could not rectify. There’s a large service brigade, and they’re all in a hurry, which leads to carelessness. More than once, wine glasses and serving trays came crashing to the floor. A runner was scolded loudly for delivering food to the wrong table (not ours).

More seriously, not until we got to the molten chocolate cake was a dish delivered at the right temperature. Amidst a long parade of courses, almost every one was lukewarm. Plates were not pre-warmed, and most of them sat on the pass too long. The food here is accomplished, but it is undermined after it leaves the chef’s hands.

We were, however, treated with courtesy and care by the many captains, sommeliers, and runners who waited on us. You cannot eat cheaply at Bouley, but it is one of the few restaurants in its class that offers dining à la carte, with appetizers $14–21 and entrées $36–43. There are two tasting menus, $95 and $150. We had the latter, all nine courses of which unfolded over four hours.

The amuse-bouche (above left) was a Cauliflower mousse with trout caviar and 25-year-old balsamic vinegar. Next was the Porcini Flan (above left) with Dungeness Crab and Black Truffle Dashi. One can understand the raves this dish has received, but as would be the case all evening, it needed to be warmer. This was followed by a Foie Gras Terring (below left).

Unlike most tasting menus in town, there are choices for most courses. We split for the next course, one of us having the Cape Cod Striped Bass (above right), the other an Organic Farm Egg (below left) with Serrano ham and a blizzard of other components.

Lobster (above right) was, once again, not quite warm enough.

The next savory course offered a choice of Foie Gras (above left) and Squab (above right).

The final savory course was the only outright failure. A whole “All-Natural Pennsylvania Chicken,” supposedly baked “en cocotte,” was brought out in a large glass vessel. Imagine our surprise when it was returned to the kitchen for plating, and three wan slices of breast appeared (above left), once again lukewarm—spa cuisine at its worst. How could such a beautiful bird could yield so little? What became of the dozen other chickens that paraded by us? Was there just one Potemkin chicken, brought out for show, but having nothing to do with what we were served?

Rack of lamb (above right) came out without a flourish, but the meat was on the tough side, and as you may have guessed by now, lukewarm.

Desserts ended the evening on a high note, even if we were too full to fully appreciate them. There was a Strawberry and Rhubarb parfait (above left), and then a crème brûlée birthday cake (above right).

We moved onto “Chocolate Frivolous” (above left) with five different variations on chocolate, with which the house comped a glass of Maury. The petits-fours (above right) were excellent, too.

Portion sizes for this nine-course menu were on the large side. The chocolate alone was more than I eat most evenings for dinner. I do not recall feeling more full after a long tasting menu.

I can’t imagine why David Bouley’s service team so often lets him down. He can afford the best, and he ought to be getting the best. Of course, I am phrasing my complaints in relative terms: we didn’t experience bad service. But we didn’t get what the chef and the room deserve.

Bouley (163 Duane Street at Hudson Street, TriBeCa)

Food: ***
Service: **½
Ambiance: ****
Overall: ***

Veritas

Note: This is a review under chef Gregory Pugin, who was fired in August 2010. After remodeling, the former Tao chef Sam Hazen replaced him.

*

We’ve been eager to return to Veritas ever since Gregory Pugin took over as executive chef in the middle of last year. Pugin had been executive sous-chef at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, and given our high opinion of that restaurant we figured that Veritas could only get better.

Mind you, we thought that Veritas was already a very good restaurant under the previous chef, Ed Cotton. Perhaps the food alone wasn’t quite worth three stars, but it was certainly good enough when the incomparable wine list was taken into account.

We heard even better reports of Chef Pugin’s cuisine, which unlike that of his predecessors just might be worthy of a visit on its own account. The Times completely ignored the transition. We do not recall a single mention of it, even in passing, by Frank Bruni—a sad but not altogether surprising omission, given his lack of enthusiasm for this style of dining.

For a couple of weeks in August 2009—traditionally a slow month for this kind of restaurant—Veritas was offering 25% off all wines, and this was the excuse for six members of the Mouthfuls food board to pay a visit.

Pugin, unlike his predecessors (Scott Bryan and Ed Cotton), brings a classic French sensibility to the menu. It’s still prix fixe ($85, as opposed to $82 when I last visited), but the dishes seem more formal and elegant than before.

I didn’t make a mental note of the amuse-bouche, but I’ve included a photo (above left). There were something like five or six choices of house-made breads, and I enjoyed both of those that I sampled.

I loved the rich flavor of the Lobster Nage (above left). Two of my companions had the Peekytoe Crab Mille-Feuille (above right), which one of them described as “a very nice presentation of two ‘slices’ with jicama forming the bottom layer and avocado the top.”

A Degustation of Lamb (above left) might well be called a Symphony of lamb, including the loin, the chop, and sweetbread, all perfectly prepared. Another of our party had the Skate Wing (above right), which he described as “superb.”

I was mightily pleased with the Grand Marnier Soufflé with crème anglaise (above left). Two others at the table had the Sparkling Grape Consommé (above right), of which one said, “I didn’t detect much sparkle, but it was as grapy as all getout.”

The petits-fours (right) weren’t as impressive as in some three-star restaurants, but they got the job done.

Obviously wines were to be a focal point of our evening, and with six in our party it was possible to try five of them. I won’t even attempt to describe them all, but fortunately another of our party has done so.

Service was mostly attentive, but the staff seemed slow to take our initial wine order, a curious omission at a restaurant focused on wine. The dining room was no more than half full, and our six-top was the largest party.

Veritas already had one of the city’s best wine lists. With the arrival of Gregory Pugin, it now serves the kind of food that such great wines deserve.

Veritas (43 E. 20th St. between Broadway & Park Avenue South, Flatiron District)

Food: ***
Service: **½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

DBGB

Chef Daniel Boulud is gradually working his way down the formality ladder. His five New York restaurants, in order of opening, are Daniel, Café Boulud, DB Bistro Moderne, Bar Boulud, and now DBGB—each more casual than its predecessor.

This is sensible positioning on Boulud’s part. Each of his five NYC properties fills a distinct niche, but all of them retain an essential French soul. In that respect, he parts company with fellow four-star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who puts his name to a much wider variety of concepts, many of which have little to do with the cuisine he is famous for.

Not that DBGB is a classical French restaurant—it serves hamburgers and hot dogs, after all—but the core of the menu is French, and it’s a sensibly edited document. It doesn’t try to be all things to all people—as David Bouley tried and failed last year at Secession.

And Boulud knows how to roll out a restaurant. Industry glitterati were all a-twitter at the opening, fawning over the chef’s beer and sausages, admiring the row of cooking pots dotted along the walls, all donated by famous chefs. Beneath its rustic pretensions is a business model that, according to the Times, needs to gross $4.5 million per year to be profitable.

None of this is resentment. Actually, it’s admiration. Boulud could teach the rest of the industry how to open a restaurant. Even at his most casual place, the kitchen runs smoothly. The serving staff are attentive and friendly. They take reservations, check parcels, and transfer the bar tab to the table. It’s nice to know that at least some of David Chang’s antics aren’t being copied by everyone.

The menu is a slave to fashion in at least some respects, with many sections that blur the traditional lines between appetizers and entrées, a system that encourages sharing, and at times over-ordering. We had about the right quantity of food, but it was far too monotonous, and our stomachs felt weighed down at the end of the evening. We may well have chosen the wrong mix of items, and in that respect neither the menu nor our server offered much guidance.

About that menu: there are cold appetizers ($7–17), fruits de mer ($30, 60, 90), hot appetizers ($8–16), charcuterie (a subset of the Bar Boulud menu; $7–12); sausages ($9–15); a section labeled tête aux pieds, which I interpret loosely as “head and feet” ($9–12), entrées ($16–26), three different burgers ($14–19), and side dishes ($6).

Despite all of those categories, the menu manages to avoid the appearance of rambling. The largest section is the sausages, with 14 choices. Along with the tête aux pieds, it’s somewhat confusingly captioned “To Share,” although the section also includes the DBGB Dog ($9), which is just a standard hot dog, albeit with house-made sautéed onions and relish.

We ordered one hot appetizer, two sausages, and one of the tête aux pieds, all to share. This may have been the wrong way to appreciate the menu, but our server either encouraged, or at least did not discourage us from doing this. The kitchen sent out the items one at a time, and at a good pace.

We loved the Octopus à la Plancha ($12; above left), an ample portion lightly cooked, exactly as it should be. Our next item was supposed to be the Toscane ($11; above right). We are not sure if we got the right thing, as it was in a sub-section of the menu captioned “spicy,” and we found nothnig spicy or Tuscan about it. This was the one part of the evening when we could not flag down a server, so we decided to just eat what we had been given. The sausages here tasted like dressed-up breakfast—which is to say, not bad but not wonderful either.

Our next item, the Tunisienne ($15; above left) lived up to its billing. A spicy lamb & mint merguez gave way to a punchy braised spinach with chickpeas. Other sausages caught my eye, such as the Toulouse (pork & duck gizzard with cassoulet beans) and the Boudin Basque (spicy blood and pig’s head), but those will have to wait until another day.

The Pied de Cochon, or pig’s foot ($13; above right) needs to come with a Surgeon General’s warning. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but this thing is huge. Even to share, it was probably excessive. Meat from the pig’s foot appeared to have been smoked, braised, then wrapped in a log and deep fried. There were a few small pieces of bone that apparently remained by mistake, though it is hard to say for sure, as I have nothing to compare it to. The dish was intense, but in the end a bit cloying.

A side order of fries (photo above; $6) was a tad on the mushy side.

There’s a wine list, naturally, but we ordered from the long list of beers, which pair well with such fat-laden food.

DBGB is a noisy restaurant. There are a few booths in alcoves that seem to offer a bit of seclusion, but they’re available only for larger parties. Most diners, even VIPs, are seated in the larger central section, where the packed tables and exposed hard surfaces are tough on the ears. Despite the raucous atmosphere, servers are dressed smartly, and we saw at least three managers prowling the floor and checking on customers’ wants. Except for one brief stretch when we could get no one’s attention to ask about our Tuscan sausage, it seemed there was always a server, a runner, or a manager stopping by—even if you couldn’t quite hear them.

There is much more here, and if the restaurant were on my way home I’d visit a lot more frequently, but I feel full just thinking about all of that fattening food. I’d still like to come back for the “Piggie” (a 6 oz. burger topped with Daisy May’s pulled pork), but I think I need to diet first.

DBGB (299 Bowery at E. 1st Street, East Village)

Food: *
Service: *½
Ambiance: *
Overall: *