Dominic

Note: Dominic has since closed. For later visits, see reports here and here.

I dined at Dominic last night. It opened last summer under the name “Dominic Restaurant & Social Club,” but the mildly odd “Social Club” seems to have been dropped. Dominic replaced a Portugese restaurant called Pico, which I never visited, but I recognize the same high-backed chairs that I always used to see when I passed by. I believe it is still under the same owners.

Chilled spring pea soup with spiced shrimp was a lively start. I hadn’t read the menu too carefully, so I would have been happy with just a solid pea soup, which this was. The unexpected spiced shrimp offered a flavor explosion, making me regret there was just one of them in the bowl.

Onto a main course of crispy Atlantic skate with endive marmelada and pink peppercorn vinaigrette, on a bed of stewed cherry tomatoes. Yes, the fish was delightfully crisp on the outside, with just a hint of the marmelade flavor suggested in the description. I couldn’t perceive the pink peppercorn vinaigrette, but the palate here seems to lean towards the subtle. The fish came with warmed greens and a three of a large vegetable I couldn’t recognize — shaped like sausages, but tasting like onions.

Appetizers are $9-12, pastas $8-12 for starter portions, $16-20 as mains. Other main courses (a mixture of meat and fish) are $19-26. Side dishes are $5. The prix fixe is $38 for any three dishes on the menu, or $52 with wine pairings. My meal of appetizer, main course, and a glass of the house wine was $46 with tax and tip.

Dominic’s décor is mostly unchanged from its Pico days. It’s comfortable, spacious, and friendly to the eye. Service was smart and attentive. I will definitely be visiting Dominic again.

Dominic (349 Greenwich Street, TriBeCa)

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

Brunch at Steamers Landing

Note: As of January 2011, Steamers Landing is now Merchants River House.

*

I enjoy living in Lower Manhattan, but my friends have often heard me complain about the lack of good brunch restaurants east of Broadway. Not the lack of restaurants (as there’s a good supply of them), but specifically the lack of restaurants with great brunch menus. I don’t necessarily mean “great” as in Normas, Sarabeth’s Kitchen, Bubby’s or Balthazar, but simply a solid weekend brunch place with a variety of omlettes, pancakes, waffles, etc.

Well, such places don’t seem to exist east of Broadway, which restauranteurs perhaps still think is a Monday-to-Friday neighborhood. A place around the corner from me called Cafe 92 serves low-end diner food, but it’s so limited and ordinary that one quickly tires of it. It’s a bit embarrassing to take guests there, although on occasion I have done so. That leaves the west side, where – thanks to Battery Park City and TriBeCa South – options are a bit more numerous. However, it is a longer walk. This weekend, I found a romantic brunch setting that might just be worth it: Steamers Landing, located on the Battery Park City esplanade between Liberty and Albany Streets.

I’d often walked by Steamers Landing while enjoying the view on the esplanade – one of Manhattan’s least known scenic treasures – but for some reason it never occurred to me to walk by for brunch. Turns out they have a wonderful brunch menu. Steamers Landing will never eclipse the city’s more famous high-end brunch eateries for its food alone, but they do a fine job, and on top of that is a spectacular view of the Hudson that beats just about any other restaurant in the city. Steamers Landing serves lunches and dinners too, but that’ll be a topic for another day.

Some Saturday or Sunday morning, when the weather is nice, head on out to Battery Park City and try out Steamers Landing for brunch. Be sure to sit in the outdoor garden. After that, take a nice long walk on the esplanade and walk off the calories you just inhaled. You’ll be glad you did.

Steamers Landing (375 South End Avenue between Liberty and Albany Streets, Battery Park City)

Public

Note: For a more recent review of Public, click here.

Public is a double James Beard award winner for both restaurant design and restaurant graphics. The motif is that of a public library circa 1964. Who knew that card catalogs and leaded glass restroom doors would be modern chic? Even the menu comes on a clipboard that looks like it’s been pulled from manilla card stock.

Unfortunately, you can’t eat décor. When it comes to food, Public’s catalog entry is: almost, but not quite. My friend’s Grilled Mayan Prawns with asparagus were very good, but she thought the chef was too parsimonious with the ingredients, especially the asparagus. My sister-in-law’s Tasmanian Sea Trout was very good, but a tad too spicy. My brother’s Roast New Zealand Venison Loin was “very good, but not great,” for reasons he didn’t specify. My Roast Lamb Chump was stringy, and in fact not as good as the accompanying vegetables.

So we had a happy evening, for which we had no regrets, but no one in our party of four felt that the food quite lived up to the design. Luckily Public is very reasonably priced for a high-concept place, with mains in the $18-25 range. However, they do clean up on the appetizers (we weren’t that hungry, and didn’t order any), which are expensive compared to the rest of the menu at $8-19. Desserts are $8.50-$11.50; we shared two between us and were satisfied without being overwhelmed.

Public (210 Elizabeth St. between Spring St. & Prince St., NoLIta)

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

Bond Street

A few years ago, Bond Street was the Japanese restaurant of the rich and famous. Every review mentioned the celebrities and fashion models one encountered there. It is still doing a healthy business, but you can land a reservation easily on OpenTable, and you score a 1,000-point bonus for requesting an off-peak time, which we did.

BondSt has a suave décor of cool earthtones. My brother said it’s the kind of restaurant that the chicks on Sex and the City frequent, but which he always assumed didn’t really exist. From the unassuming frontage of a townhouse on the eponymous street in NoHo, you don’t imagine that such an oasis lies waiting for you inside. An elevator took us to our table on the second floor, emphasizing the feeling of being transported to another world.

I ordered the $60 tasting menu for me and my two guests. (Tasting menus are also available at $40, $80, and $100.) We were served eight courses, as follows:

1. Steamed, salted edamame.

2. Vegetable tower in a preparation so fancy it seemed a crime to bite into it.

3. Small squares of tuna tartare, with a respberry sauce and szechuan peppercorns.

4. BBQ quail wings with a beehive of fried soba noodles. The crispy quail wings were a highlight, although gone all too quickly, but the soba noodles were ruined by an overly salty soy sauce.

5. Scallop and shrimp over a sweet potato puree. This was the hit of the evening.

6. A sushi plate, six or seven pieces, with a mixture of salmon, whitefish, yellowtail, tuna roll, and others.

7. Noodle soup with seafood tempura.

8. Dessert – each of us received something different, which we shared, and all of which were wonderful. One was a bento box of mixed sorbets and ices; another was a heavenly preparation resembling strawberry shortcake with heavy cream, served in a sundae bowl; and third, a vanilla custard.

We ordered from the lower end of the sake menu, a $45 bottle that was smooth and fruity to the taste – one of the best sakes I’ve experienced, which may just tell you that I am not a true connoisseur. Service was friendly, attentive, and unpretentious. I can’t say that Bond Street equaled the amazing lunch I had at Nobu a few weeks ago, but it was a great meal nevertheless, which I’d be happy to recommend to anybody.

Bond Street (6 Bond Street between Broadway and Lafayette Street, NoHo)

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

Le Madeleine

Note: After 28 years, Le Madeleine closed in March 2007, when they lost their lease.

*

My brother and his wife are visiting from California. They bought tickets the other night for Movin’ Out, and on short notice we needed a restaurant reservation. We’re dropping some major dough on food this weekend, so I wanted to keep things on the inexpensive side. It’s here that OpenTable.com came to the rescue. I chose Le Madeleine, a French bistro slightly to the left of the Theater District.

Entrées are generally in the $15-20 range, with an entrecote steak priced at $25. Appetizers are from $6-11, and side dishes all at $4. However, as all of the entrées come with appropriate vegetables I really see no need for the side dishes unless you want to load up on such things as braised red cabbage, Israeli couscous, or creamed cannellini beans. You can read the menu at Le Madeleine’s website, although the at present it’s showing the winter menu; what we saw was a bit different.

My sister-in-law chose the Spice Crusted Duck “Aigre Doux,” which is served with creamy polenta, braised red cabbage, and caper-currant-cranberry sauce - a clever preparation that was full of diverse flavors. My brother chose the braised Berkshire pork (I didn’t know the Berkshires were known for that), which he described as wonderfully tender. I had the grilled marlin, an off-the-menu special, which tasted a lot like swordfish. It was served in a sweet lemon butter sauce.

Le Madeleine is clearly oriented to the pre-theater crowd, and service is organized to get patrons out to their shows on time. Service was friendly, if occasionally frantic. There is a lovely garden room with a skylight, as well as a more conventional indoor room that resembles a hundred other bistros.

This is a solid pre-theater restaurant off the beaten path of Restaurant Row. It offers inventive fare that, at its relatively low price point, is well worth a try.

Le Madeleine (403 W. 43rd Street, west of Ninth Avenue, Theater District)

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

Amuse (the restaurant)

Note: Amuse has since closed—I believe in 2007. The restaurant with more lives than a cat finally ran out of them. Some of the Amuse team has since landed at the North Fork Table & Inn.

*

Amuse has had as many lives as a cat. It was once Harvey’s Chelsea, and then it was The Tonic, and last year it became Amuse after Garry Heyden (formerly of Aureole) took over as chef. William Grimes of the New York Times reaffirmed its two-star status, while observing how improbable it was that a restaurant so often re-invented has managed to maintain its culinary standards.

It’s been about a year since Grimes’s review appeared, and Amuse has evidently changed its concept again. On May 21, 2003, Grimes wrote:

Amuse is short for amuse-bouche, the French term for the bite-size preappetizers intended to titillate the palate. They serve multiple functions. They help keep hunger at bay, but they also inspire the chef to create an eye-catching bit of whimsy that can serve as a preview of coming attractions. Mr. Hayden has elevated the status of the amuse-bouche and designed an entire menu around small tastes, doing away with the appetizer-entree dichotomy.

His menu offers a half dozen choices in four price categories, $5, $10, $15, and $20. With each increase in price, the preparations become more complex and the ingredients more expensive. The portion size increases, too, so the more expensive dishes look like abbreviated entrees. Five dollars buys a silver julep cup filled with herbed French fries. Twenty dollars earns an upgrade to peppered duck breast with endive marmalade and a sweet, syrupy reduction of black mission figs.

Other reviews I found on the web seemed to be based on the same menu Grimes saw, which you can still read on menupages.com. That menu is no more. Although many of the same dishes are still there, the menu is now organized in the more conventional appetizer-entee format. Amuse is no longer trying to be a tapas bar. It does retain some hints of the original idea — the appetizer section is labeled “Tastes for Sampling and Sharing.” One who didn’t know what the former menu looked like would simply conclude that this is a longer name for “appetizers,” and that indeed is how my friend and I took it.

Some of the dishes cry out to be shared. I ordered Crisp Cod and Yukon Gold Potato Cakes with Truffle Tartar Sauce to start. Out came four thick half-dollar sized fish cakes - a dish perfectly suited for sharing. Heyden’s preparation gave a crispy and spicy excitement to a dish that could otherwise seem an upscale version of Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks. My friend ordered Atlantic Salmon Two Ways (house smoked & tartare, with a chive potato cake). This dish was not quite as easy to divide, although I had a taste.

Every review has mentioned with approval the Five Hour Braised Short Rib of Beef with Carmelized Sea Scallops, so I had decided well in advance that this would be my main course if it was still available - which it was. The short rib was so tender that one hardly needed a knife, and it tasted like home-cooked brisket. The scallops were a hearty size, with a crisp exterior that led to a tender, beefy center.

My friend ordered the Grilled New York Strip Steak, which arrived pre-sliced. Some restaurants serve porterhouse this way, but I’ve never seen it done to a New York Strip. This, too, could be a vestige of the restaurant’s earlier tapas-style menu. The steak had a crispy charred exterior and and a wonderful tender flavor. I’m usually skeptical of ordering a NY Strip anywhere that doesn’t specialize in steak, but this dish is worth a try.

In sum, Amuse offers an inventive and eclectic menu, beautifully presented, and fairly priced given the overall standard in the city for fine dining restaurants. There are 28 appetizers (priced from $4-18) and 8 mains (priced from $20-30). We sampled but two of each, so your mileage may vary, but everything coming out of the kitchen certainly looked good. There is also a chef’s tasting menu (obligatory these days at any restaurant claiming to be serious about food): amuse bouche, four courses, and dessert for $55, or paired with wine $75. This looks to me to be a bargain.

I reserved Amuse on opentable.com. The restaurant called me twice to confirm I was coming, which led me to think, “Wow, they really must have heavy demand for tables.” To the contrary, it was nearly empty when we arrived at 7:00pm, and only about half-full by the time we left at 8:30. The space is comfortable and the contemporary décor pleasant on the eye, with rooms called the apartment, the lounge, the salon, and the library. Both the bar and dining area are amply proportioned, and there appear to be private rooms upstairs, which we didn’t investigate.

Amuse (108-110 West 18th Street, between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, Chelsea)

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

(The Mercer) Kitchen

I was invited to lunch yesterday at (The Mercer) Kitchen, one of the ubiquitous Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s many properties. (Its proper name is written out with parentheses around “The Mercer.”) The restaurant occupies part of the ground floor and basement of a hotel at the corner of Mercer & Prince Streets, in SoHo. It’s an impressive space. The ground floor is a bar, with comfortable chairs and small cocktail tables generously spaced. In the back of this area are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, suggesting a library.

The restaurant proper is downstairs. Part of it is in the vault space below the sidewalk. Look up from your table, and you see (and sometimes hear) people walking over the grillework up above. There is glass in the interstices of the grille, but keep reading: evidently the seal isn’t quite perfect. Near the back are several long communal tables — evidently a staple of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurants. These tables look on an open kitchen — yet another JGV staple. The décor is dark and sleek.

I ordered from the $20 prix fixe lunch menu. An appetizer of Wild Mushroom Bruschetta with Prosciutto failed to impress. I am the world’s worst cook, so when my reaction to a dish is, “I could easily do that,” it’s not a good sign. It seemed to be no more than mushrooms and ham on slightly soggy rye toast.

Things improved as we moved to the main course: Roast Duck Breast with Bok Choy, Ramps and Rhubarb. The rhubarb, a pale pink sauce framing thin duck slices, was what made the dish.

Dessert — Gianduja Parfait with Coconut Soup — was heavenly. One of my lunch companions speaks seven languages, and he explained that gianduja is a hazelnut chocolate. I wonder why the restaurant couldn’t tell us that on the menu. Is “gianduja” a common word? I don’t think so.

In the middle of the meal, we noticed a flurry of activity around the tables near us. It turned out the staff were hanging umbrellas on the sprinkler pipes just below the grillework that separates the restaurant from the sidewalk above. By the time they were done, the entire front section of the restaurant was ringed with a protective cocoon of upsidedown umbrellas, resembling the famous scene from Mary Poppins. What a bizarre sight! Rain was forecast, but none fell before we left, so I didn’t get to see what that was like.

It was a satisfactory meal, but I won’t be dying to go back.

(The Mercer) Kitchen (99 Prince Street at Mercer Street, SoHo)

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

Nobu

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Nobu.

A vendor invited me out to lunch at Nobu on Friday. That meant he was paying. We had no reservation, but we were waiting by the door when they opened at 11:45am, and we were seated immediately. My host had done this before, so apparently it’s a dependable way to get into Nobu without a rez. We only had to promise that we’d vacate our table by 1:30pm. It was my first visit.

For lunch, Nobo offers a wide variety of sushi and sashimi plates, soups and side dishes, several sushi/sashimi assortments in the $23-$28 range, a prix fixe package at $20.04, and the chef’s omakase at “$55 to $65 and up.” There’s also a two-column list running to a closely-spaced half-page, which the waiter called “Chef Nobu’s signature dishes.” The menu had another name for them, but the waiter’s term sticks in my memory.

The waiter advised us to skip the sushi, and to order 4 or 5 of the signature dishes, which he told us are served “Tapas style.” That means they come one at a time, to be shared by the table. We chose 5 of the signature dishes – basically the ones the waiter recommended – as well as the Spicy Seafood Soup, which my host had enjoyed on his previous visit. The waiter’s descriptions went by at blazing speed, and frankly I wasn’t entirely sure what we’d chosen. He told us about a few special dishes not on the menu, and we chose one of these, but I always wonder why a restaurant can’t be bothered to put the daily specials on a piece of paper. I think Nobu could manage it. At any rate, it all sounded good.

The Spicy Seafood Soup came first, and it reminded me of that old commercial about the soup so chunky you want to eat it with a fork. There was just an amazing amount of seafood packed into the soup bowl. Then came yellowtail with cilantro and jalapeno peppers; I thought the last two ingredients slightly overwhelmed the first. It was the only dish about which I had even the slightest reservations. Our second signature dish was kobe beef, thinly sliced, and prepared with two kinds of spices. A tuna sashimi salad was sheer perfection, with several large slices of rare tuna. Then came squid pasta (hard to explain), and finally a black sea bass so rich and flavorful that I can still taste it.

I can see why the waiter steered us away from sushi. My host, who had ordered sushi the last time he visited, confirmed this. The so-called signature dishes are extraordinary and without parallel. The sushi, he said, is of course among the best that can be had, but doesn’t stand out from what’s available elsewhere quite so conspicuously.

With five dishes shared among two of us, plus soup, I left Nobu quite full, and yet sorry that the meal was over. Every dish was creative, full of flavor, perfectly seasoned, and prepared with an obvious attention to every detail. While enjoying our own meal, my host and I watched the parade of plates arriving at adjoining tables. No matter what you order, every dish entertains the eye as much as the taste buds. They are all works of sculpture – “Art in Food,” as my host observed. He promised to invite me back again, this time for dinner, in a couple of months or so. I can hardly wait.

Nobu (105 Hudson Street at Franklin Street, TriBeCa)

August (the restuarant)

Note: August closed in June 2014 after facing a 200% rent increase. My review below dates from a decade earlier, under Executive Chef Tony Liu, who left the restaurant in 2007 to take over Keith McNally’s Morandi, and later Pulino’s. Terrence Gallivan replaced Liu, before moving to the ill-fated Alto in 2011. Jordan Frosolone, the former chef de cuisine at Hearth, replaced Gallivan. In November 2011, Josh Eden (formerly of Shorty’s.32) replaced Frosolone. The restaurant has re-opened on the Upper East Side at 791 Lexington Avenue at 61st Street.

*

I had a very happy experience the other night at August. Eric Asimov was absolutely right about the heavenly smell.

Arriving at 6:30pm for a pre-theater dinner, I had my choice of tables. When I left an hour later, they had started to fill up but still had two tables free. By 8:30pm, you would definitely have a wait. An outdoor garden is to open within the next couple of weeks. It will have a retractable roof, allowing it to be used year-round. This will double the capacity of the restaurant.

I ordered a Ramp Vichysoisse soup to start, which misfired. It is supposed to be served cold. If this were a blind taste test, you’d have trouble deciding whether it was a hot soup that had been left at room temperature too long, or a cold soup that had been allowed to warm up.

Things improved markedly with Softshell Crabs Grenobloise, served over a bed of haricots verts. The crabs, served whole, were done to perfect crispness, and an explosion of flavor greeted the tongue as I bit inside. Incidentally, the dish appears on the menu as “Skate Grenobloise,” but for now softshell crabs have replaced the skate. (This was fully disclosed before I ordered.)

I finished with the daily selection of artisinal cheeses, a selection of three very flavorful and contrasting chesses that the manager informed me he had selected and purchased himself. He recommended a glass of Castilla y Lyon Rioja that perfectly complemented the cheeses without overwhelming them.

Service was friendly and prompt, although I thought it took a tad too long for the cheese course to arrive. However, I had left plenty of time to finish dinner, and the Rioja kept me amused. One minor complaint is that the dessert menu had no prices. Silly me, I assumed the desserts would be priced in proportion to the rest of the menu, and didn’t bother to ask. Turns out the cheese course was $15, which was only $2 less than my entrée. Although I’ve no regrets about the evening, I really had no clue that I was selecting a $15 dessert.

August doesn’t take reservations, but apparently there are exceptions if you get to know them. While I was there, a lady came in and booked a table for 8pm on Sunday for her mother’s 91st birthday. “We don’t take reservations, but call me at 6pm Sunday to remind me, and I’ll set aside a table for you.” It was obvious from the conversation that the lady had been in before. I overheard a couple of other conversations along similar lines.

It really is time to rename the Eric Asimov’s New York Times column, “$25 and Under.” The arrival of a new critic starting June 1st may provide the occasion to do so. My 3-course meal, with two glasses of wine, ran to $73 including tax and tip. By no rational definition can this be considered a “$25-and-under” restaurant, unless you eat a one-course meal and drink sodas, which is probably not what most people have in mind. Nor is August the first restaurant the Asimov column has covered that stretched the $25 ceiling way beyond plausibility. The name hasn’t changed for about 20 years. Thanks to inflation, restaurants that realistically fall within that range, and yet are still worth reviewing, are a vanishing breed. Perhaps “Informal Dining,” although less catchy, would be a more sensible title.

August (359 Bleecker Street, between W. Tenth & Charles Streets, West Village)

Food: ★½
Service: ★
Ambiance: ★½
Overall: ★½

Famous Oyster Bar

Note: In January 2014, Famous Oyster Bar closed after 55 years in business, after it lost its lease.

*

Last night, a friend visiting from out of town invited me to join him for dinner in midtown. Restaurant plans were loose, and I cringed when he suggested the Famous Oyster Bar. The neon “Seafood” sign suggested it catered to tourists who are looking for something a bit better than Red Lobster. I’m sure the clientele is nearly all walk-ins staying at hotels like the Sheraton and the Milford Plaza.

The restaurant has been there since 1959, and it probably hasn’t had a renovation since then. Not even Zagat has noticed it. The décor is a trite assemblage of maritime detritus (a life preserver, an oar, etc.). The laminated menus are worn and and frayed, with a predictable offering of steaks, seafood, pasta fra diavolo, frutta di mare, clam chowder, and so forth. When you’ve finished your diet coke, the server brings an iced tea refill (that is, when she manages to notice you need one).

There are specials written on a board, and it is here that the Famous Oyster Bar comes alive. A whole trout stuffed with crabmeat was a pleasant surprise, crisp on the outside, and succulently moist inside. This was an entrée that actually required some thought, and they managed to get it right. My friend ordered soft-shell crabs and was also pleased.

We both had clam chowder to start; although unremarkable, it was a bargain at $3.95 for a cup. The seafood entrées were generally in the $19-23 range. The bill for two came to $82 (with only one of us drinking alcohol).

I’m willing to try anything once, and the Famous Oyster Bar managed to exceed expectations. It helps to have expected nothing.

Famous Oyster Bar (842 Seventh Ave at 54th Street, West Midtown)

Food: *
Service: Satisfactory
Ambiance: Fair
Overall: *