I never thought I’d see the day, when French restaurants were opening in New York at such a pace that I cannot visit them all. But that’s the moment we’re in, and I am a happy camper.
The menu is overtly French, but the décor is all downtown New York. Picture windows on two sides look out on Kenmare Street, where shops, bars, and clubs are sprouting up like spring flowers. Unlike the last time I was here, the view is actually worth looking at.
The entrance is down a few steps. There’s a small lounge area, with bench seating and low stools. In the dining area, the tables and chairs are bare-bones. Around the room, there’s a few votive candles and a few bouquets, offsetting an austere slate grey ceiling and cement columns.
If at first you don’t succeed…you know how the saying goes.
Andanada 141 is the third attempt to create a destination Spanish restaurant at a particularly cursed address, following on the heels of Graffit and Gastroarte. The graffiti-inspired décor remains largely intact, despite the new name, which refers to the top tier of seats at a bullfighting ring.
Chef Jesús Núñez, the chef behind the first two attempts, is gone. Replacing him is Manuel Berganza, who earned two Michelin stars at two different Madrid restaurants. You’d think those chops would be worth at least a look, but after seven months, the Daily News has supplied the only pro review, awarding four stars out of five.
I guess modern Spanish cuisine is a tough sell in this neighborhood. On a Friday evening, before the ballet, the restaurant was not half full. That’s a pity. Andanada 141 is the best of the three Spanish restaurants that have tried to make a go of it in this space.
The cuisine is more conservative than Jesús Núñez’s sometimes baffling creations—which we mostly liked, but not everyone did. We had time to try only a few items. I look forward to trying a lot more.
The menu offers tapas in a wide price range ($6–25), entrées ($28–32), paellas ($24–25 per person, minimum two guests), and desserts ($9).
In Pulpo a la Gallega ($16; above left), tender chunks of octopus were in a potato purée, seasoned with olive oil and pimienton de vera, or what tasted to us like chives and paprika. This was one of the best appetizers we’e had all year, rich and satisfying.
We were also fond of the Migas al Pastor ($13; above right), a crockpot of chistorra (Basque sausage) with breadcrumbs and grapes, topped with a poached egg. Good as it was, it would have made a far better impression had it not been served at the same time as our entrée, the paella, which deserved the stage all to itself.
Four paellas are offered: seafood, meat, vegetarian, and mixed. The carne ($25; above), which we ordered, was one of the best paellas I’ve had in a while, a happy brew of pork belly, rabbit, chicken, carrots, chorizo, red peppers, and yellow rice. For one week only, the restaurant was offering a free pitcher of sangria (very good) to go with the paella, so we didn’t explore the wine list. That’ll be for next time.
We dined at the bar, where it was sometimes a challenge to get the server’s attention, despite the restaurant not being full. That, coupled with the late delivery of our second tapa, took the edge slightly off what was otherwise an excellent showing. It’ll take a few more visits to establish if Andanada 141 lives up to the promise of the three dishes we tried. We are certainly looking forward to it.
Andanada 141 (141 W. 69th Street, east of Broadway, Upper West Side)
Food: Modern Spanish, but fairly conservative, and very well prepared Service: Earnest and friendly, but needs polishing Ambaince: A comfortable UWS townhouse, artfully decorated
For an impressive pedigree, you can’t beat the two guys running Betony, the new New American restaurant in West Midtown.
The chef is Bryce Shuman, a former executive sous chef at Eleven Madison Park. The GM is Eamon Rockey, who ran the cocktails at EMP before helping to launch Compose, Atera, and then Aska.
The owner, Moscow native Andrey Dellos, inspires less confidence. He’s the guy behind the Meatpacking District horror Manon. He also owned Betony’s predecessor in this space, the lavish Russian-themed Brasserie Pushkin, which got mixedreviews, was ignored in The Times, and lasted just nine months.
In turning to Shulman and Rockey, Dellos apparently realized that he needed a team with New York street cred. Their presence more-or-less guarantees that the critics will at least visit the place.
But the renovations are a half-measure that, I fear, has not gone far enough. Having invested enough in Brasserie Pushkin to buy a small château (around $5 million), Dellos apparently wasn’t willing to lose all of his sunk costs. So Betony is Brasserie Pushkin lite, the décor revised but still recognizably the same space.
I like a spot like Betony, with its plush chairs, soft lighting, and crisp tablecloths. I’m in the minority these days. I worry that the downtown crowd that know Shulman and Rockey from their previous gigs will take one step in the door, and find it an instant turn-off. They shouldn’t, but I’m a realist. If Betony needs to rely mainly on a midtown audience, I wonder if perhaps the food is too intellectual for the less adventurous diners that populate West Midtown near Carnegie Hall.
The theme is the all-day French brasserie, in the style that Keith McNally nailed at Balthazar and a bunch of other places. If McNally has proven anything, it’s that this type of restaurant can print money, if it’s done right.
So far, printing money is Lafayette’s major accomplishment. It reproduces the genre faithfully, and reasonably well by New York standards. If it can remain this good, after the critics have finished with it, Lafayette could even be essential. Of course, it could also become a mediocre tourist spot, like McNally’s Pastis. All options are open.
It’s hard not to be wistful at the thought of talent squandered. Carmellini at Café Boulud was one of the best three-star chefs in town, and his success at A Voce showed that it was no fluke. When he opened Locanda Verde, you could at least understand why he aimed low: the city was still recovering from the financial crisis. Despite that, Locanda Verde turned into a terrific place—as it still is—despite its modest aims.
But the financial crisis is no more. Michelin-starred tasting menus are sprouting up all over town, like spring ramps. Not that that’s the only way to aim high; but it is one of the ways. Carmellini no longer has to aim low. Apparently, he wants to. Whether Lafayette turns into another mediocrity, like The Dutch, or becomes a solid (if uninspired) asset, like Locanda Verde, remains to be seen.
These companion rooms vary widely: some are separately reservable, others are not. Some are far more casual than the multi-star restaurants they’re attached to; others don’t vary much at all. Some serve a completely different menu; others serve an à la carte version of the main dining room menu.
Nougatine is separately reservable, has a completely different menu, and is much more casual than its four-star companion. Of course, the word casual must be taken in perspective, on a menu where a $19 cheesburger shares the stage with $72 Dover sole. Most of the entrées, though, are in the $24–38 range that defines New York’s “upper middle,” while appetizers range from $12–23.
The space, originally a lounge for the adjoing Trump International Hotel, was long an afterthought, seldom professionally reviewed. Nougatine received its first New York Times review in late 2012 (Pete Wells, two stars), a mere fifteen years after the flagship next door received four stars from Ruth Reichl right out of the gate.
The owners of The Greenwich Project, a new restaurant in Greenwich Village, must be commitment averse. Their corporate name is The Project Group, and all of their restaurants are The ______ Project. With names like that, you can do anything. All options are open.
They have a candidate for the world’s worst restaurant website, which cannot be bothered to transmit basic information like hours of operation or menus.
Their facebook pages are slightly more informative. Slightly. As I gather, The Mulberry Project, in Little Italy, is known mainly as an inventive cocktail den. The Vinatta Project (in the former Florent space), is a cocktail and comfort food spot. Or perhaps I’m mistaken. It’s hard to tell.
The Greenwich Project aims higher. There’s talent in the kitchen: Carmine di Giovanni, a former chef de cuisine at Picholine and David Burke Townhouse. Those places aren’t cheap, and this one isn’t either. With appetizers $15–21 and entrées $28–39, you’re going to drop some coin to dine here.
There’s no doubt Manhattanites will pay those prices at the right restaurant, but there’s not much margin for error. They’ll need a cavalcade of strong reviews and word-of-mouth to keep the place full.
Andrew Carmellini is one of those chefs who can do anything, and get coverage. No doubt the Public Theater realized that, when they invited him to open a new restaurant in their newly-renovated building, the former Astor Library.
The theater gave him a gorgeous, cloistered space, dimly lit with dark paneling and comfortable seating. Once you’re inside, it doesn’t look at all like a restaurant attached to a performing arts center. It’s open most days till midnight, Thursdays to Saturdays till 2:00am — hours clearly intended to attract more than just a pre-theater audience.
What’s missing is a reason to go. The food is competent, of course, as you’d expect at any Carmellini place. But it feels phoned in, as if Carmellini spent fifteen minutes on it before turning his attention to the next project.
The menu is divided in three “Acts,” with various snacks ($6–13), appetizers ($12–15) and entrées ($17–27). Perhaps they were worried about pushing the metaphor: desserts are labeled, simply, “desserts” ($7–9). All of it is fairly obvious stuff.
You know what a prix fixe menu is, right? And you know what a “small plates” menu is, right? If the two get married and have children, what do you get?
Meet Feast, a prix fixe restaurant with menus structured like a sequences of small plates. We loved it. To us, it was the best of both worlds—though others might not be so fond of it. Such is the case when a restaurant tries to fiddle with tradition.
The main menu offers a choice of three “feasts.” As of last week, the options were the Farmer’s Market Feast ($38), the Scallop Feast ($49), or the Nose-to-Tail Lamb Feast ($48). According to a recent email from the restaurant, the scallop feast will shortly switch to soft-shell crabs, and lamb will morph to pork. And so on.
Each feast consist of an appetizer course with four plates, an entrée course with another four, and a dessert. All prices are per-person, and the entire table must order the same feast. There’s also a separate (and small) à la carte menu, which the restaurant is clearly trying to downplay. Most tables seemed to be ordering feasts, which is the whole point of the restaurant.
So you get nine plates, served as three courses, at a pretty damned good price. Unlike a tasting menu, it doesn’t go on for hours. Unlike a small-plates restaurant, there’s no guessing how much to order, nor upselling from servers trying to entice you into ordering more than you need.
The chef is Christopher Meenan, a former chef de cuisine at Veritas. The food is not as ambitious, but it’s pretty good, and you get dinner for just about the price of an entrée at Veritas. It just might be just about the best meal for two, under $100 (before tax, tip, and drinks), that we’ve had in quite a while.
The entrance at Neta could easily be missed. Like many sushi restaurants, it’s an inconspicuous storefront on a side street and does little to command attention.
That’s just fine for Neta, which is not meant to attract walk-ins, or those who just happened to stumble upon it. Everyone there, comes with a purpose.
Sushi aficionados have been packing Neta since March last year, when two former Masa acolytes fled the mother ship, and opened this much humbler joint in Greenwich Village.
All this is relative. At Masa, you’ll drop $450 per person before drinks, tax, and tip. At Neta, the omakase options are $95 or $135, or you can order à la carte (much like Masa’s sister restaurant, Bar Masa).
When you pay 70 percent less, obviously there is a difference. Neta is crowded and loud, even on a Tuesday evening. It serves mostly local fish species. The textural contrast between fish and rice is more blurry, less clarified. A piece of toro doesn’t bring the waves of unctuous flavor that it does at Masa.
But you’re paying $135, not $450, and surely that counts for something. Practically the entire $40 difference between the two omakase options goes into a serving of Toro Tartare & Caviar, a wonderful dish early in the meal, which sells for $48 all by itself if you order à la carte.
Altogether, there are 13 courses. The first half of this procession is more impressive. A Szechuan peppercorn spiced salmon stands out, as does a serving of grilled scallops and sea urchin; likewise, spicy lobster and shrimp. Among a sequence of sushi and rolls, a flight of fluke, soft-shell crab, and grilled and marinated toro was the highlight.
Sushi chefs in the U.S. send out desserts as if by obligation, though they haven’t much to say. Still, Neta has improved on Masa with a serving of peanut butter ice cream. I’m not sure I’d be happy if I’d paid $8 for it (the à la carte price), but at the end of a long omakase it felt just about right.
The service is far less formal than at classic sushi spots, but still reasonably good. We were seated at a table (the bar was full), and that makes for a less personalized experience. I frequently had to ask for dishes to be described a second time, when the first couldn’t be heard over the din.
I wouldn’t put Neta in the upper ranks of the city’s best sushi restaurants, a category that certainly includes Masa, along with Sushi Yasuda, Kurumazushi, Soto, Sushi of Gari, and 15 East. Neta’s not in their league, but it’s certainly very worthwhile.
Feel free to click on the slideshow below, for photos and descriptions of all the dishes we were served.
Neta (61 W. Eighth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village)
Food: Sushi and Japanese small plates Service: Informal but attentive Ambiance: A sushi bar and cramped tables, in a space that’s too loud
Parm, from the Torrisi/Carbone team, has an odd distinction: it’s a good restaurant and an over-rated restaurant.
It’s over-rated, mainly because of two very insane stars that Pete Wells awarded last year, thereby instantly insulting every real one- or two-star restaurant in town. Parm is a two-star restaurant like I’m the Queen of England.
But if we step back from the ledge beyond which madness lies, Parm is good for what it is, a slightly over-achieving neighborhood sandwich shop.
The one-page menu doesn’t change much: it’s kept inside of a plastic sleeve, to keep it presentable and avoid re-printing costs. There are a bunch of veggies, pastas and fried foods for sharing (various items, $6–14), sandwiches and platters ($9–17), and then just one entrée served every day, a Veal Parm that comes in three sizes ($16, $22, $25). Nightly dinner specials (keyed to the day of the week, and apparently unchanging) are $25.
All of this happens in a tiny space next to the chefs’ first hit restaurant, Torrisi Italian Specialties. We dropped in at around 6:00pm on a Saturday evening, with the tables full, but ample space available at the bar. The tables looked awfully cramped and dark: even if there’d been one vacant, I think the bar was the better bet.
Monday, June 24, 2013 at 08:19PM 
I never thought I’d see the day, when French restaurants were opening in New York at such a pace that I cannot visit them all. But that’s the moment we’re in, and I am a happy camper.
Then there’s today’s subject, Cantine Parisienne, in the Nolitan Hotelwhere Ellabess flopped. The restaurant has a separate entrance, and you never really feel like you’re in a hotel.
