Then, three months ago he opened the Laotian-themed Khe-Yo, followed soon thereafter by American Cut, a steakhouse, both within a few blocks’ radius of the first restaurant. It’s a good way to branch out, as the steakhouse can run on auto-pilot, and the chef at Khe-Yo is a former sous-chef of his, Soulayphet Schwader. It’s a Forgione restaurant in name only.
The dining room isn’t my kind of place: dark and gloomy, a thumping sound track, overly loud. It was full when I arrived for an 8:00pm reservation; our table wasn’t ready until 8:20. The nine-seat bar was full, at first, and there was nowhere to wait.
But for what it is, the service here is very good. The staff apologized profusely, and repeatedly, for seating us late. Once I finally got a bar seat, the tab was transferred to our table. I wouldn’t choose to go back, but if it’s your type of spot, you’ll be well cared for.
The menu is just 14 items (plus one special) in three categories: salads ($11–15), appetizers ($9–13) and entrees ($21–33). I assume these dishes are Laotian (a cuisine I’ve never tried before), but only in New York would the names of the purveyors be added to the name. Khy-Yo serves not just any beef jerky, but Creekstone Farms Beef Jerky.
You’ve got to give Shaun Hergatt credit for persistence, if naught else. His first fine-dining restaurant won two Michelin stars but took a critical drubbing. The critics acted clowns, but the same clowns (or some of them) are still running the circus.
A lot of chefs would have followed it up with a steakhouse or a noodle shop. But here he is again, giving the critics what they already told him they don’t want.
To be fair, dumb reviews weren’t all that went wrong at SHO Shaun Hergatt. It was in a terrible location, not visible from the street, on an upper floor in a building surrounded with scaffolding and Jersey barriers. Even with the best reviews, I’m not sure he could have overcome that.
Juni (a diminutive of the Latin word for June) isn’t a SHO clone. It doesn’t look like a hotel in Dubai, the room isn’t as spacious or as opulent, there are no tablecloths, he’s not sending out edible gold leaf, and the wine list is far more modest. But it’s still an expensive fine-dining restaurant in a boutique hotel (The Chandler at 31st and Madison), a genre the foodocracy does not embrace.
There are two gracious, comfortable dining rooms, decorated in taupe and other muted colors, with custom flower prints on the walls and a large floral centerpiece. The flower motif is in the food too, with colorful petals on many of the dishes. Servers are in navy suits and ties, runners in dark blue coats, with a low diner-to-staff ratio. There’s a heavy ceramic pedestal at every place setting, and plates are served on top of this. Water glasses, silverware, and serving pieces, etc., are first-rate.
The cuisine is recognizably Hergatt, but there is a hint of the new Nordic here and there, with a heavy dose of crisps, flower petals and herbs, assymetric platings, and austere presentation. Whether you like this style of cooking or not, it is obviously labor- and ingredient-intensive, and beautiful to look at.
I’ve run out of ways to describe enjoyable, inexpensive, faux-rustic Italian restaurants. But there are never enough of them when they’re done well.
Pagani, named for a former music store that once occupied its bright West Village street corner, is done well. You might’ve guessed that if you’ve been to the owners’ other place, the Upper East Side restaurant and wine bar Uva, which we visited a couple of years ago. It has similar charms.
The owners hired Taavo Somer to oversee the décor, which ensured it would be attractive, comfortable and unoriginal. Wisely, they let him nowhere near the food. Mark Barrett, a veteran of Tabla and Babbo (and quite a few other places), runs the kitchen.
The menu is the typical multi-category broadsheet, with a variety of snacks, cured meats, and cheeses as the opening act. Starters and salads are $8–12, pastas $16–21, main courses $19–27, side dishes $6. That qualifies as inexpensive these days.
None of it is very adventurous: even picky eaters could return again and again, without repeating a dish. It all just sounds so good. Four of us were able to sample nine items, and there wasn’t a dud among them. We’d happily order any of them again. There’s a steady 4–5 ingredients per dish, and they all make sense. It feels odd to write that, but it’s often not the case.
Apple fennel salad ($10; above left), with arugula, feta cheese, pistachio, and olive oil, was a bit on the tart side, but after some discussion we rated it a success. The obligatory Farm Poached Egg ($9; above right) keeps company with mushrooms, spinach, and crispy pancetta vinaigrette.
The Sliced Garden Zucchini salad ($9; above left), with grilled corn, string beans, and almond vinaigrette, had a pleasant lemony flavor. The Soft-Shell Crab special ($10; above right), served breaded and deep-fried, won’t be available by the time you read this: order it next year.
Folded Chicken ($19; above) is terrific, the least-expensive entrée and one of the best. The bird has plenty of company: arugula, Parmigiano, tomatoes, spinach, and dried figs. It never feels like too much.
Rich Potato Gnocchi ($19; above left) with walnuts, gorgonzola, and black truffle, were lovely. Garganelli ($19; above right) with whole wheat pasta, spicy sausage, spinach, red onion, and tomato sauce, were more conventional but exactly as they should be.
The desserts are a highlight: the Chocolate Banana Pudding Sticks ($9.50; above left) and the Fruit Torte ($7.50; above right).
The two-page wine list (mostly Italian) is not as deep or as compelling as at Uva, but perhaps that’ll change as the restaurant matures. In the meantime, it is at least fairly priced, with a majority of the bottles—even the majority of the reds—below $50. You rarely see that any more. A 2009 Sicilian red was $45.
We reserved our table of four the same day; nevertheless, the restaurant was packed, so I assume they get a lot of walk-ins. It took a server about 15 minutes to take our order, and only then did he get around to mentioning the specials. After that little glitch, the meal went smoothly.
As I noted, there’s nothing terribly original about Pagani, but if you’re in that neck of the woods, it’s a fun place you’d never get tired of.
Pagani (289 Bleecker Street at Seventh Avenue South, West Village)
Food: Rustic Italian Service: Friendly but a bit slow Ambiance: Blonde woods, mirrored walls; Taavo Somer playbook
Let’s bow down to Daniel Boulud’s genius. None of his New York restaurants have ever failed. Even at the flagship Daniel, which some people find stodgy, he has managed to keep it just enough up-to-date to remain popular and relevant.
More remarkably, he did this without ever abandoning his French roots, during many years when his cuisine was not exactly fashionable. Even that Italophile and Fracophobe Frank Bruni never gave him a bad review.
Boulud renovates his restaurants after a decade or so. Both Daniel and Café Boulud went under the knife at around their tenth anniversaries. This summer, it was db bistro moderne’s turn. I’m sure it was still doing decent business, but after a dozen years it was Boulud’s most off-the-radar restaurant. It was time.
My two previous meals there were in 2004 and 2006, so I don’t recall the original very well. The interior has been totally redone by Jeffrey Beers International in mirrors and dark paneling (see Eater.com for photos). They’ve added a bar, which the original db bistro lacked. Most of the tables have tablecloths. It looks a bit corporate, but very much in Boulud’s style, and appropriate for a neighborhood that sees a lot of hotel and commercial traffic. Boulud was never the sawdust and heavy metal type.
Note: Enduro did not endure. As of August 2014, the space is BV’s Grill, owned by the same people.
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Welcome to Enduro, a handsome new West Midtown spot owned by the heir to the Junior’s restaurant chain.
The name won’t mean very much to the rest of us: the owner’s grandfather ran a string of “Enduro” restaurants in the 1920s. It’s also a type of off-road motorcycle racing, in case you were wondering. But the owners get plenty of mileage out of the name. On the corridor leading to the restrooms, there’s a bunch of fake ads for fictitious products called “Enduro.”
They dropped some coin to build this place, spending $7 million to renovate a former Outback Steakhouse. The dining room is spacious and masculine, with heavy wood tables and big horseshoe banquettes, dominated by a large rectangular bar in the center of the room.
Enduro claims to be a classic American grill, a sufficiently malleable description that allows the chef to serve almost anything. On a rotisserie grill, prominently visible in the partially-open kitchen, you’ll find pork loin, chicken, and rotating whole fish specials.
The dinner menu offers snacks ($4–16), salads ($10–24), appetizers ($10–17), mains ($16–49), and side dishes ($8–12). Those are wide ranges. You could get out cheaply with the burger ($16), or not so cheaply with the ribeye steak ($49).
The all-American wine list offers 13 choices by the glass, and 2½ pages’ worth by the bottle, with reds ranging from $40–600, and a decent selection under $60. I didn’t see many bargains, but it was clearly a list with a point of view, and not just the generic stuff that most new restaurants serve.
Pretzel Bread ($4; above left) is baked in shiny round balls, with creamy mustard that delivers a potent kick. Chicken Liver Spread ($8; above right) is a great starter, but it needed to come with twice as much bread. Extra bread came along later, at no charge, but we had to wait for it.
I didn’t taste my companions’ dishes, but there were general nods of approval for Linguini with clams, garlic, and olive oil ($17; above left), and Striped Bass with brown butter and bok choy ($28; above right).
Berkshire Pork Loin off the rotisserie ($24; above left) had a great smoky flavor, but it could have used some crisping at the edges for textual contrast. A side of thick-cut bacon ($8; above right) was a hit at our table; it won’t put Peter Luger out of business, but it’s well worth ordering.
You worry that it could get noisy here, but tables are generously spread out, and the high ceilings dissipate the sound. It was about 80 percent full on a Friday night, with a multi-generational crowd ranging from baby carriages to geriatrics.
Managers and servers seemed to be on top of things in the dining room, but it was a challenge to get a bartender’s attention. There were other minor service lapses: the long wait for a second helping of bread; entrées served with sauces on the side, but no serving spoons.
But the food is good enough for this type of place, the room friendly and welcoming. Enduro is located on the edge of Midtown, where there are plenty of business lunches to be had, with plenty of housing stock to the east, where there’s always demand for a place like this.
Enduro (919 Third Avenue at 56th Street, East Midtown)
Food: American grill standards Service: Enthusiastic but not yet polished Ambiance: A large corporate space where you can relax
Remember Etats-Unis, the Upper East Side restaurant with an improbable Michelin star? I never quite bought into the star, but for what it was — straight, up-the-gut comfort food — it was certainly well above the neighborhood average.
I’m not sure why Etats-Unis closed (it was always reasonably full, in my experience), but close it did, nearly four years ago. The chef, Derrick Styczek, has resurfaced at Domain, a new restaurant in the space that was formerly Vareli in Morningside Heights, a short hop from the Columbia campus. The name might not be the best choice. Search on “Domain restaurant,” and you’re liable to get back a list of Internet domain hosting services.
There’s room to spread out here, in a roomy two-story storefront that was nowhere near full on a Wednesday evening (the Jewish holiday week, to be fair). It’s an attractive, romantic spot, with dark wood, low lighting, and acres of exposed brick. Not that you haven’t seen it before, but you haven’t seen it here.
Styczek’s cooking is more dainty and precious than I recall at Etats-Unis. There are hints of the former comfort-food style it’s not quite as pleasurable here. Prices are calibrated to the neighborhood, with only one entrée (lamb) abouve $29.
Was I imagining it, or have we entered a Golden Age of Japanese cuisine in New York? New York’s Adam Platt seems to agree: this week, he posted a roundup of six new entrants—and he still didn’t manage to hit all of them.
I won’t have the time or the money for such an extensive survey. If I could only do one, I wasn’t sorry that it was Sushi Dojo, which opened in the East Village in early June and was an instant hit.
The chef getting all the press is an unlikely one: 27-year-old David Bouhadana (above left), a Jewish kid from Florida who trained with Iron Chef Morimoto and apprenticed for four years in Japan. To this gaijin’s ears, his Japanese sounds like the real McCoy. (I remember him vaguely from Sushi Uo, where he worked briefly in 2009.) Joining him are Hiromi Suzuki (one of the few female sushi chefs in New York) and Makato Yoshizawa, the only one of the group born and raised in Japan.
The restaurant’s name, loosely translated, means “Sushi Education.” The chefs will talk about their fish until you’re ready for a Ph.D., but they can leave you alone, if you’d prefer. It would be pretentious to suggest that you can’t get your education elsewhere, but these chefs are more talkative (in a good way) than many others I’ve encountered.
There’s a menu of hot dishes from the kitchen, sushi and sashimi à la carte, and omakases at escalating prices. On the evening we were there, the top omakase was $80 per head (since raised to $90), which compares favorably to $135 at Neta a few months ago. Ingredients are everything in sushi: much of the bill at Neta was taken up with an insane serving of toro tartare and caviar, which is $48 all by itself when ordered separately.
The sushi itself at Neta was pedestrian; here, it’s the highlight of the meal. The chef said that about 70 percent of the fish they serve is imported from Japan, with the rest sourced from the likes of Boston, New Zealand, Montauk, San Francisco, and so forth. In our omakase, I thought the ratio was more like 50/50.
There are about 40 sakes on the menu. We discussed our preference with the sommelier, who brought out a selection of three for us to try, and then steered us to an inexpensive choice. We ordered the $80 omakase with Chef Suzuki (above right), and she went to work. A poached South African ocotpus (upper left of photo) had just come steaming out of the oven.
We started (above left) with a few pieces of that octopus; tuna tartare with wasabi, soy, and yam; and a British Columbia oyster. Then came a selection of sashimi (above right) with shrimp, hamachi, tuna, and yellowtail.
The heads of the shrimp were sent to the kitchen, and came back deep fried (above left). This is a terrific dish, if you don’t mind the gross-out factor. I’ve always eaten shrimp heads, but I realize that many people don’t.
The planned omakase included five pieces of sushi: madai, golden eye snapper (Japan), shimaji (Japan), Tasmanian trout, and fatty tuna otoro (Boston). I’ve shown the trout (above right); you can see every piece in the slide show below.
We didn’t feel quite ready to be done, so we ordered five extra pieces. A scallop (above), seared with the blowtorch and finished with soy and yuzu zest, was one of the highlights. We also enjoyed the Japanese spotted sardine, salted and cured; the Santa Barbara sea urchin; sea eel; and seared fatty tuna with lemon juice and salt.
The omakase did not include dessert or anything from the kitchen, aside from the deep-fried shrimp heads. If our experience is any guide, you’ll probably want a bit more. (The kitchen sent out a pot of tea in a clay pot, which does not normally come with it.) I ought to add that we dined at the publicist’s invitation, and although we paid for our meal, it was at a discounted rate.
There are 36 seats, which were mostly full by 9:00 pm (when we were wrapping up), but only 14 at the bar. As usual for such establishments, you need to sit at the bar to get the most out of the experience, or should I say, the education.
If you want sushi around here, the sky’s the limit. At Kurumazushi, you can spend $1,000 in 45 minutes, and they’ll serve you slabs of imported otoro the size of porterhouse steaks. Sushi Dojo occupies a more rational sphere. In its price range, it is one of the better Japanese meals I’ve had in New York.
Sushi Dojo (110 First Avenue at E. 7th Street, East Village)
Food: Sushi front and center Service: Personalized service from one of three sushi chefs Ambiance: Austere but not too serious, in the traditional blond wood
Barbecue is a cuisine I love, but all too rarely find the time to enjoy. Many of the recently acclaimed places have opened in Brooklyn or Queens, and I don’t love ’cue quite enough to head over there.
Mighty Quinn’s Barbecue is an exception, opening last December on a bright East Village street corner in the old Vandaag space. I had a mid-day appointment in the area, so I headed over at 11:30 a.m., when they open for lunch.
Good barbecue in NYC is still scarce enough that the better places can be packed at peak hours. Getting there early is a boon: I was served immediately. It’s not a huge space, and I’m sure at the dinner hour it’s packed.
The owners have put a high gloss on what is still, at root, a bare-bones operation. The space is bright, shiny, and comfortable. Nevertheless, you stand in a cafeteria line, and the food is served on metal trays.
I’ve got mixed feelings about Estela, the new tapas-style restaurant from chef Ignacio Matos and beverage director Thomas Carter.
We last saw Matos at Isa, where he wowed audiences and critics (or most of them), but didn’t wow the owner, the world’s greatest poseur, Taavo Somer. Apparently unwilling to operate even one good restaurant, Somer fired Matos abruptly in the summer of 2012. Isa still exists, but is culinarily irrelevant, like all of Somer’s other places.
So it’s an understatement to say I was rooting for Estela to succeed. I didn’t love everything I tasted at Isa, but I loved a lot of it, and it mattered.
Alas, Estela is a let-down. The food is all pleasant enough and mostly pretty good. You won’t eat badly here. But most of it is beneath what Matos was trying to do at Isa. It was worth going out of your way to visit Isa. It’s worth dropping in at Estela if you’re in a few blocks’ radius.
It’s an even bigger come-down for Carter, who was beverage director at Blue Hill Stone Barns, and now serves a wine list that fits on a single page. (That is, unless there’s a larger list that the server neglected to show us.)
None of this is accidental. In a joint interview with Eater, Matos and Carter made their lower ambitions abundantly clear: “I don’t want us to think in terms of ‘developing dishes’ or anything like that,” says Mattos of the way he’s training his young and small kitchen to work. “These should just be plates of food, nurturing and relatively cheap, that remind you of the home-cooked meals you never experience anymore.”
Note:Alder closed in August 2015. Wylie Dufresne, the chef and owner, did not explain the decision, but when we dropped in a couple of months earlier, we found the dining room almost empty on a weeknight. Earlier in the year, he instituted a tasting-menu format that, perhaps, didn’t go over as well as he’d hoped.
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Give Wylie Dufresne credit. Give him double-credit.
When WD~50, his modernist—and not always approchable—restaurant, struggled during the Great Recession, he stayed open. For a while, he was doing just five nights a week, but he didn’t give up, and he never dumbed down the menu.
And for ten years, WD~50 was all he had. Unlike most chefs with three New York Times stars, he didn’t open a more casual restaurant that might’ve distracted him, or competed with the flagship for his attention.
In May 2012, WD~50 abolished the à la carte menu in the main dining room. Tasting menus are now all you can get. They’re also back up to seven nights a week. I guess the Great Recession is over. (Not everyone thinks the new format is an improvement.)
About that time, he started planning Alder, a new casual restaurant in the East Village, which finally opened in March 2013. Alder is à la carte and less elaborate than WD~50. It’s Dufresne’s take on classic pub food, recognizably in his style, but not as avant-garde as WD~50 sometimes can be. There are four cooks in the kitchen at Alder, as opposed to twelve at WD~50, so the food is a lot simpler.
Generally, you’ll recognize what you eat, which at WD~50 is not always the case. You can take grandma or perhaps even your picky Aunt Gertrude, provided she doesn’t mind the noise. Sound levels in the dining room can be punishing. We visited on a warm summer evening, and fortunately were able to sit outside. Indoors, I might like Alder a lot less.
But we ate outside, so I loved it.
The menu consists of eighteen items priced $8–24, served tapas-style, and suitable for sharing, with no explicit division between appetizer and entrée. Like most small-plates restaurants, it only seems inexpensive. Our fairly modest order of five plates, a cocktail each, and a $48 bottle of wine, ran to $177 before tax and tip.
Every meal at Alder begins with a serving of Giardiniera(above left), an Italian–American relish of pickled vegetables. It’s a bit odd, as several critics have noted, as it doesn’t really go with the rest of the food, and no bread is served with it. But it’s very good on its own terms: we made fast work of it.
“Pigs in a Blanket” ($13; above right), like so much of the food at Alder, is a play on the old classic, here made with Chinese sausage, Japanese mustard, and a sweet chili sauce. Consider it a must-order.
Sun Gold Tomatoes ($18; above left) are served with Peekytoe crab, fried naan, and edamame; but what comes through is mostly tomato, and not enough of the crab.
I could eat the foie gras terrine ($19; above right) all day. It was served with watermelon and shiso on a Ritz cracker. (Some critics have mentioned poached apple, so I think the recipe changes periodically.) But the Ritz cracker is a constant: who knew it paired so well with foie gras?
New England Clam Chowder ($16; above left) comes with “oyster crackers,” which you toss into the soup. It’s a terrific combination. A party of two need not worry about ordering this: they send it out in two bowls.
The kitchen aced the Roasted Chicken ($21; above left), served with oyster mushrooms and charred romaine. But Halibut ($24; above right) was bland and dry: I was more fond of the corn underneath it than the fish itself.
The pacing of the meal was just right; silverware was replaced after every course.
There’s about 40 bottles on the wine list, plenty of them below $50. The server decanted our 2010 Morgon ($48), which was served at the correct temperature, but in juice glasses. For a check that rises above $200 after tax and tip, you’d think they could afford wine stems.
Out of five dishes, I count three hits, one dud (the Halibut), and another in between (the tomatoes with crabmeat and edamame). That’s pretty much what everyone says about Alder: Dufresne and his team don’t hit a home run with every dish, but there’s more than enough to make the restaurant hugely worthwhile.
Alder (157 Second Avenue at E. 10th Street, East Village)
Food: A modernist take on pub food Service: Very good; would be great if they’d bring in real wine glasses Ambiance: East Village chic, and too noisy: east outside while you still can
Monday, October 21, 2013 at 07:50PM 
Marc Forgione has made the transition awfully quickly. I mean, from chef to restaurateur.
